Clark school district police use of force report raises more questions about tactics, racial bias

The Clark County’s School District Police Department’s first legislatively mandated use of force findings, which showed when pepper spray or stun guns were deployed during the 2025-26 school year it was overwhelmingly against Black people, prompts more questions about school police practices which prompted the report’s requirement in the first place.

The report, which released its findings this month, found that 18 out of 21 times officers deployed force in 11 confrontations, it was against Black people. Of the remaining three instances, two were Hispanic and one was white.

The report doesn’t break down the age or race of the person each of the 11 times use of force was used in the 2025-2026 school year to get a full picture of these tactics. 

Nevada Current requested a breakdown of age and races of the people targeted in those 11 incidents, but a CCSD official said the information wasn’t readily available.

“If school police don’t provide more data on their use of force incidents, the only thing I can suspect is they are again engaging in providing the public with nominal and minimal information to reduce any perception issues that our community has of Clark County School District, police which is not viewed favorably,” said Athar Hasseebullah, the executive director of the ACLU of Nevada. 

Assembly Bill 420, enacted in the 2025 legislative session, requires school districts to track and report use of force data. 

The original ideas for the legislation was “to ban the use of pepper spray,” Democratic Assemblymember Cecelia González, the bills’ sponsor, said in an interview, adding that “folks couldn’t get there on that and that’s how we ended up with the reporting.” 

Community members who question the frequency and manner of how force is used on students, she said, had to file public records requests that school district police “can deny, deny, deny,” she said. 

By having reporting requirements, González said officials could at least obtain better insight on how police in schools operate. 

AB 420 passed with bipartisan support.

The Washoe County School District use of force report for the 2025-26 school year listed no use of pepper spray, chemical agents, or batons.   

CCSD’s report showed 11 incidents in which force was deployed on 21 different people. The report didn’t indicate how many people, in particular students, were involved in each incidents

The report provides an aggregate breakdown of the ages when use of force was used: 12 were younger than 18, eight cases were people were ages 18 to 35 years old and one instance where the person was older than 35.

González said the legislation didn’t require a more robust breakdown of age and race of each student out of concerns from the school districts that it could identify students. 

There is room to improve the reporting requirements, she said. But the findings, while not surprising were still disappointing, González said, adding it confirms racial bias and anti-Blackness

“Believe students when they are talking about their experiences,” she said. “They have been talking about this issue for a number of years and people have brushed it off saying it wasn’t happening. Now we have data to start to show the types of patterns of how often this is happening and to which students.” 

The fact that people of color “are definitely having more interactions with police and use of force than any other demographic” is something elected officials need to reckon with, González said. 

“There definitely needs to be a conversation about why this is only impacted primarily Black students,” she said.

The data found 8 incidents were on campus and three were off property. Though the report doesn’t identify the school, it provides addresses of locations the incident took place. 

The address for Cheynne High School appeared twice. The off-property incident where two officers used a stun gun was near Robinson Middle School.  

In a statement, CCSD warned people to “use caution in drawing conclusions from a relatively small data set of 11 use of force incidents in the 2025-2026 school year.” 

“CCSD has been very transparent about our work to train officers and staff members to provide interventions for all students before behavior escalates, as well as to recognize biases when working with students,” the statement said. 

The district has faced a litany of questions, and lawsuits, around transparency in recent years. 

After 2023 footage of police officers arresting several Black teenage boys at Durango High School, slamming one to the ground, the ACLU of Nevada had to sue to access footage. 

“We all saw what happened on video,” Haseebullah said. “This was an out of control police officer who decided to violate the law and ended up costing the district and our general public a million dollars because of his antics.”

Clark County School District Board of School Trustees approved a $1 million settlement with two teenage students in 2025.  

More recently, the school district has been scrutinized after reporting from the Nevada Independent found that the district had a contract with the automated license plate reader system Flock. 

“The reason they are not viewed favorably is because they have not been transparent with the public on a variety of issues ranging from the use of Flock all the way down to their use of excessive force and racial profiling of our clients at the Durango High School,” Haseebullah said. 

González questions if there are still times officers use force but it’s not reported. 

“Let’s say there is a fight and pepper spray is deployed but then the officer is using force to push a student to the ground,” she said. “Are they only classifying that as pepper spray? Are we getting other aspects of use of force?”