Police use pepper spray on unruly College Station student

A 14-year-old was sprayed with pepper spray outside his middle school Thursday morning after fighting police officers.

The A&M Consolidated Middle School student was taken to the Brazos County Juvenile Detention Center and charged with assaulting a police officer, a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

College Station police spokeswoman Rhonda Seaton said the department received a call at about 10 a.m. from school administrators reporting a disruptive student.

District spokesman Chuck Glenewinkel said the school resource officer did not work on Thursday, prompting employees to make the call.

"Normally it would have been up to the school resource officer to call the police for back-up if she needed it," he said.

Seaton said the student was being disruptive in the classroom and was asked to leave the campus. Counselors talked to him for a while before deciding to call police, she said.

The student was being escorted from the building when he decided he didn't want to leave, Seaton said. His guardian was at the school already for unrelated reasons.

The teenager began resisting and was sprayed with pepper spray by an officer, she said.

Seaton said an officer's use of force must always be reasonable and necessary and no greater than the least amount of force necessary to accomplish the law enforcement objective. Every officer has to go through training to use pepper spray, which includes being sprayed, she said. The use of pepper spray is one of eight levels of suppression an officer can apply before resorting to deadly force.

Glenewinkel said he can't recall a time when pepper spray was used on another student at a district school. He said he couldn't release information about what the student did to cause the disruption or whether he had been in trouble before.