How many large policemen does it take to subdue a 4’10” 75 lb sophomore in High School?

If you answered less than three, you just don’t understand appropriate force:

Perez, with her mom and her brother by her side, described the chain of events that led to the officers wrestling her to the floor.

She says her reading teacher caught her using her cell phone in class, which is against school rules, and told her to go to the hallway. That’s where Perez says she was confronted by an assistant principal who demanded she relinquish the phone. Students caught using phones in class are required to turn them over to school administrators and then retrieve them at the end of the school day, for a fee.

“I just didn’t want to give up my phone,” said Perez who said she was talking to her mom who suffers from medical conditions. Perez said she was trying to make sure her mom was OK.

“She asked me for the phone and I didn’t want to give it to her, because I was scared. I ended up walking down the stairs trying to get away from the AP (assistant principal) and then she had already called the cops.”

The HISD resource officers also demanded she hang up the phone and hand it to them. Perez admitted she refused again.

‘He grabbed my hand, one of them was right here, one grabbed my hand, I didn’t want to let go of my phone because I was on the phone with mom,” she said.

Perez was detained. Her mom says she was turned away when she rushed to the school to make sure her daughter was OK. And as of Wednesday morning Perez said school officials had not returned her cell phone, in lieu of a $15 fee she would need to pay.