Broward Schools Superintendent Peter Licata will seek an outside review into whether a police detective acted properly when he arrested a longtime volunteer during a heated School Board meeting.
Debbie Espinoza, 61, was arrested Oct. 17 on a charge of battery on a police officer, a third-degree felony, and disrupting a School Board meeting, a misdemeanor, following a dispute with another meeting attendee over a proposed sex education curriculum.
Some School Board members have criticized the arrest as an overreach by Detective John Mastrianni, who works for the district’s Special Investigative Unit.
Licata had initially said last week he would ask Jaime Alberti, chief of safety and security, to review the matter. But Alberti was seen going in and out of an old concession stand area where Espinoza was detained, leading some School Board members and supporters of Espinoza to call for an outside investigation.
“At the recommendation of Chief Alberti, Superintendent Licata will seek an external review of the matter,” district spokesman John Sullivan told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
The reviewer has yet to be identified, and Mastrianni will remain on duty, Sullivan said, adding he didn’t know how long the review would take.
The State Attorney’s Office will decide afterward whether to pursue formal charges against Espinoza, said Paula McMahon, a spokeswoman for the office.
“Prosecutors will wait for the school district to complete its investigation/review and submit its findings and recommendation to our office for review,” McMahon said in an email. “Prosecutors will then review all of the evidence, facts, and circumstances before making any decision about whether formal charges should be filed.”
Mastrianni’s union, the Broward County Police Benevolent Association, plans to defend him during the review.
“We’re very positive the outcome of the investigation will be Detective Mastrianni will be vindicated,” union President Rod Skirvin told the Sun Sentinel. “He’s a professional, and he reacted as such during a meeting where tempers seemed to have gotten the best of some people.”
Espinoza referred questions to her lawyer, John Thomas David. He declined to comment on the external review.
“We’re still waiting to see what the State Attorney’s Office is going to do,” David said. “We do know it’s an injustice what happened to her, and we intend to defend her rights vigorously.”
Espinoza is the former chairwoman of the District Advisory Council, which makes recommendations to the School Board. The district honored her in 2020 as “Volunteer of the Year.”
Mastrianni, 63, is a veteran police officer who joined the district’s police force in 2017 after his retirement from a 30-year career with the Plantation Police Department.
Espinoza was attending the Oct. 17 meeting to support the district’s proposed sex education curriculum and got into a dispute with parent Deidre Ruth, a vocal sex ed opponent. The dispute prompted a brief recess in the meeting and security asked both women to leave. Espinoza was arrested in the lobby outside the board room, following the incident with Mastrianni. Ruth was not arrested.
Espinoza spent 27 hours in the Broward County Jail, said her friend Carolyn Krohn, who attended the meeting with her. If convicted, Espinoza could face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
School Board member Allen Zeman said the arrest was unnecessary.
“I was watching the back of the room and didn’t notice anything that would rise to the level that this incident rose to,” he said. “I’m struggling to understand how her behavior amounted to 27 hours in jail. I want to make sure the public understands that we encourage them to come to our School Board meetings and share their ideas.”
Zeman said he is “looking forward to hearing form an independent investigation about the incident, and I also want to make sure all of our meetings are safe and secure.”
Skirvin said Mastrianni was ensuring the meeting was safe for attendees.
“We recognize that it’s a very passionate issue and tempers get out of control very quickly,” he said. “But it’s also the duty of the law enforcement officers there to take control of the situation before it becomes violent, and someone gets hurt, because once those actions are taken, you can never take that back.”
There is no public video of the alleged battery. A surveillance camera was pointed at the location in the lobby where the incident happened, but the school district declined to provide footage to the Sun Sentinel without a subpoena, citing state law and court cases.
Mastrianni wrote on the probable cause affidavit that Espinoza “lunged her body into this officer, creating body contact and causing this officer to backpedal.”
Curt Lavarello, a former school resource officer in Broward and Palm Beach County, questions whether the incident was handled properly, based on video he’s seen by meeting attendees of the moments before the arrest.
“There are a lot of tools officers have before taking someone out in handcuffs,” said Lavarello, who is president of the School Safety Advisory Council, a safety training and consulting organization. “I didn’t see any type of de-escalation, trying to calm the situation down, which is pretty key to what you want your officers to do in schools.”
The controversy comes as the district is considering creating a full-fledged police department, similar to the school districts in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. Right now, the district’s Special Investigative Unit conducts personnel investigations and provides security at School Board meetings and district events.
Schools are protected mostly by city police officers and Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies, but costs have skyrocketed in recent years, from $46,252 per officer in 2017 to $61,200 in 2021 to $103,000 this past school year.
A full police force “is not something we have formally decided to do, but I don’t think this incident should calculate into whether we should have our own police force,” Zeman said.
However, Zeman said he would like to ensure officers have de-escalation training and planned responses “to ensure public safety without exercising authorities that can lead to significant repercussions.”
