A shocking video shows a security guard forcibly removing a father, who refused to wear a mask, from a school board meeting in an upstate New York town on Tuesday.
The video, posted to Facebook by ROC for Educational Freedom Public Page, shows an unmasked Dave Calus sitting in a chair at a school board meeting while a Webster Central School District (CSD) security guard speaks to him. Calus told the Kimberly’s Revolution podcast that the guard asked him to put on his mask, to which he responded, “thank you.”
“He said, ‘I need you to put your mask on right now. You’re going to put that on,'” Calus recounted. “It was a demand, it wasn’t asking anymore, and I said ‘No, I’m not doing it,’ and that’s when he put his hands on me.”
The video appears to show the guard grabbing the back of the chair and pulling both Calus and the seat backwards toward the exit, where other apparent security guards muscle him out of the board room.
Calus, who has two sons in college and one who is a freshman at Webster Thomas High School, told Kimberly’s Revolution he sat there for “probably 15-20 minutes without a mask.”
The incident comes as “New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday the state will end a COVID-19 mask mandate requiring face coverings in most indoor public settings but will keep masking rules in place in schools for now,” the Associated Press reported.
Calus informed the podcast he entered the building without wearing a mask.
“We signed in, they said, ‘you need to wear a mask,’ and I said ‘thank you very much,” he recalled, noting that he was given a mask but put it in his pocket.
While heading to the boardroom, he said he was told unmasked parents would be forced to watch the board meeting in a classroom.
“They were segregating masked and unmasked parents, and the unmasked parents were going to have to sit in a classroom with a video monitor watching and listening to the board meeting.”
He said he walked into the classroom and said, “this isn’t going to work for me,” so he ventured back down to the boardroom where he sat until he was removed.
Calus says he was removed from the board room but not from the building.
His attorney, Chad Hummel, spoke to local outlet Spectrum 1 News regarding the incident.
“Dave has a genuine concern for his son, of course, first and foremost, but a genuine concern for the parents and the other children in Webster, in Monroe County and in New York State who have been subjected to all of these ridiculous mandates,” Hummel said.
According to a release tweeted by the town, the Webster Police Department is investigating the incident.
Webster Police Department response to inquiries regarding an incident at the Webster Central School Board meeting on February 8, 2022. pic.twitter.com/ponOC5LJ3C
— Webster, NY (@TownofWebsterNY) February 9, 2022
The Webster Central County School District released a statement on the incident, according to WHEC. The statement reads in part:
There was an unfortunate incident during last night’s Webster CSD Board of Education meeting. Prior to entering last night’s meeting, visitors were reminded to wear masks in school buildings as is mandated by New York State. The individual whom you inquired about was asked to put his mask on three times and he refused. He was then asked to leave the meeting and refused to do so, resulting in Webster CSD security physically removing the individual from the meeting.
“We strive to hold board of education meetings in public in order to inform the community of activities going on in our schools,” the statement continued in part. “Those meetings can only occur when everyone in attendance acts in a civil manner.”
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