The Loudon County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) refused to comply with Superintendent Scott Ziegler’s request to weaponize law enforcement against parents who wanted to voice their concerns with Loudoun County Public Schools’ behavior at school board meetings, documents obtained by Fox News indicate.
Ziegler, who denied there was any record of an assault ever occurring in an LCPS bathroom, sent an email on August 6 to the LCSO asking for a “five-person Quick Reaction Force (QRF),” multiple undercover deputies, and even a special operations team on standby for the district to utilize for school board meetings. Fox News reported that, according to Sheriff Mike Chapman, there were already security measures in places including “10 armed security personnel and magnetometers for people entering the building.”
Sheriff Mike Chapman denied Ziegler’s “extraordinary” request and said that the school district was asking for more than was necessary.
“[Y]our request is extraordinary and would likely constitute LCSO’s commitment of a minimum of approximately 65 sworn deputies. Despite this, you fail to provide any justification for such a manpower intensive request,” Chapman replied. He told Fox News that he bolded the words “extraordinary” and “any justification” in his original email for emphasis.
In Ziegler’s reply, he said he was “surprised” by LCSO’s response and noted that he believed the new request “mirrors the resources and support that LCSO provided on June 22.”
Another document from August, a letter summarizing a phone call that Chapman was reportedly part of, suggests that Chapman was not satisfied with how the June 22 meeting went and didn’t want his deputies involved in the school board’s suppressing of parents by “beef[ing] up its security without consultation from LCSO.”
“School board is firing people up and calling LCSO to clean it up,” noted the letter’s author Kevin Lewis, the LCPS chief operating officer.
Chapman also reportedly said on the phone call that while LCSO has offered assistance to LCPS in the past, “the plan for Aug 10/11 puts LCSO in same position and I won’t be put in that position again” and that he believed people should “have been allowed to speak” at the controversial June 22 school board meeting that Ziegler and other board members used to cover up and deny allegations of sexual assault in the district.
“School board is being dismissive of people they don’t agree with,” read another note.
The documents come on the heels of months of controversy after members of the Loudoun County School Board and the superintendent publicly denied that there had been any sexual assault by transgender-identifying students in school bathrooms in the district, even though multiple assaults by the same “gender fluid” assailant were reported in two different Loudoun County high schools.
A Virginia judge found the teenage male, who was allegedly wearing a skirt when he entered a girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School in May and was then involved in a similar incident at Broad Run High School in early October, guilty of sexual assault on Monday.
