A St. Albans police officer told a disabled student that he was “acting retarded” for not obeying the officer’s commands during an altercation inside Bellows Free Academy high school last year.
The City of St. Albans and the Maple Run Unified School District agreed this month to pay the student’s family a total of $30,000 to settle a human rights complaint alleging that they discriminated against the 17-year-old student on the basis of his disability. Officer David French, who worked at BFA as a school resource officer, was reassigned to a street patrol unit in June 2019, after the school year concluded.
