Police Should Have Written Up Alleged Altercation: Whiteside

GWINNETT COUNTY, GA — Gwinnett Solicitor General Brian Whiteside said at a news conference Monday that an alleged assault at last month’s raucous school-board meeting should “at least” have resulted in a police report.

“It’s not about race. It’s not about a mask,” Whiteside said Monday in Lawrenceville, flanked by almost a dozen community leaders including state Rep. Donna McLeod. “It’s about a person that felt they were not treated correctly when the police were there.”

While the alleged confrontation may have merited a police report, multiple observers said Monday that both race and masks did play a part.

Whiteside’s news conference was prompted by allegations by a Black Gwinnett resident that she was rushed at by a member of a largely white group of anti-mask parents who disrupted the board’s May 20 meeting. According to both Ann LaFavor and protestors who attended the press conference, the group was upset that LaFavor was trying to take pictures of them without masks.

“Security was there. They stood back,” LaFavor said Monday. “Which means Black lives don’t matter in Gwinnett County.”

Holly Terei, a mother of four from Gwinnett County who said she was at the board meeting, told a different story.

“She (LaFavor) was chasing parents with her tablet, taking pictures of parents, posting them all over social media, saying ‘what are you so afraid of, why are you running, blah de blah,’” Terei told reporters after the news conference. “Parents kept requesting for her to stop taking pictures, to stop recording them. Her response was, ‘if you’re so scared, why are you here?’ That’s what I witnessed.” Terei said she didn’t see the alleged attack on LaFavor.

According to Terei, parents were going maskless because they had been given official permission to do so. One parent brought a copy of Gov. Brian Kemp’s most recent COVID-19 executive order at that time, said Terei, showed it to a resource officer and was then told that “masks will not be mandated” that night.

“Whether it was because of his interpretation of the executive order or a decision that the head of operations had the jurisdiction to make, I don’t know,” Terei said. “But that’s what we were told.”

In fact, Kemp’s executive order issued on April 30 — which would have been the most recent order as of May’s school board meeting — expressly gives government entities “the authority to control terms of entry” onto their property everywhere except polling places. While the order prohibits excessive punishments for not wearing masks, it doesn’t prohibit government entities from mandating masks if their county still has a high number of COVID cases. The specific wording is on pages 22 and 23 of Kemp’s order.

At the beginning of the May 20 meeting, school board chair Everton Blair told the audience that they were “required” to wear masks. But when Blair asked everyone to mask up, he was met with angry shouts. The Gwinnett school board was forced then to conduct part of its meeting in a smaller room nearby to escape the crowd.

An "overwhelmingly white crowd of angry people" who wouldn't wear masks

Brian Westlake, a longtime Gwinnett teacher who is also president of the Gwinnett County Association of Educators, stood with Whiteside and related his version of what happened.

“By the time the meeting started, there was a large, well-organized and overwhelmingly white crowd of angry people who were refusing to wear masks,” Westlake said, reading from a prepared statement. “When asked to respect the policy and put on a mask or leave the building, many shouted no at Chairman Blair and board member (Steven) Knudson. And one man stood up and yelled 'we need to stand our ground' in a very threatening tone that could be understood as a reference to the use of a weapon.

“I spent four years in the Marine Corps, I am not easily intimidated,” Westlake continued, “but I was afraid that evening that violence could erupt and some in the crowd would have welcomed it.” Westlake is white.

Terei, who is also white, said that characterizing the “stand your ground” yell as threatening was “offensive.”

“They’re putting little sound bites and planting seeds for things that were never an issue,” she told reporters after the news conference. “They’re turning it once again into a political thing, telling half-truths ... What we saw today is for a political marketing scheme as far as I’m concerned.”

Regardless of who’s responsible for the conflict, a spokesperson for Gwinnett County schools said in a statement to Patch and other media outlets Monday that it would beef up security for its next board meeting.

The statement said:

“School Police continue to investigate complaints from last month’s meeting. That investigation has included numerous hours reviewing video from multiple sources. In one of the reported incidents, the citizen called out for police during a verbal confrontation with others. Three officers responded and de-escalated the situation. In the other case, there was a verbal altercation noticed by two officers who responded and de-escalated it. Neither citizen involved asked to press charges that night but did so two weeks later.

“In addition to the two formal complaints that remain under investigation, School Police do have video of at least two unknown individuals who will be issued a criminal trespass warning based on their behavior at last month’s meeting if they show up this month.

“Our school district is taking this situation very seriously as the safety of those visiting our facilities is a priority.”

On Friday, the Gwinnett County School District posted a guide to decorum at its monthly meetings. The board's next meeting is Thursday.

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