On Tuesday, Feb. 12, at 10 a.m. a male Las Positas College student pushed an instructor in the library and fled. As a consequence, he faced a citizen’s arrest and legal action. According to the student conduct code, he will receive a disciplinary action from the Vice President of Student Services due to behavioral offenses.
According to the accounts of Mark Tarte, an Administration of Justice instructor, and Sean Prather, LPC Campus Safety Supervisor, the suspect/student was ready to instigate a fight in the library with another student until Tarte intervened.
“He pushed my arm out of the way and said ‘Eff you,’” Tarte said. “He threw F-bombs around.”
Tarte tried to placate the suspect by introducing himself as a faculty member of the school and telling him to let the object of his anger, another student, go.
“He just said, ‘Get the eff out of my way.’ That’s when we walked in I knew a fight was about to start,” Tarte said. “This kid was probably gonna start it.”
He then alerted the librarian assistants to call campus security. As he turned his attention back to the situation, the angered suspect pushed the other student with enough force to make him almost fall over. Tarte told the pushed student not to retaliate.
The suspect hurried off through the back of the library as Tarte followed him to assess the direction the suspect was headed and if there was a potential for more trouble.
“I had a fleeting moment of panic he was gonna grab a weapon of some kind but all he did was put it (backpack) on,” Tarte said.
Tarte was a police officer prior to becoming a professor at LPC.
Sean Prather and another campus security officer arrived on the scene shortly. The suspect was running away from the scene with Tarte coming behind him. Prather ordered the suspect to stop, but he fled from the authorities.
Campus security had to chase the suspect as he hopped over the fences of the Child Development Center. “He ran through the Child Development Center,” Prather said. “Which is a concern because you have small children in there.”
Prather had then called the assistance of Livermore police.
The suspect ran uphill past parking lot H and, finally, to the bath houses adjacent to the track-and-field along Campus Hill drive where Campus Security and Livermore Police converged on him to put him into custody. He did not resist, but was placed under citizen’s arrest by Tarte and was given a citation by Livermore police.
The suspect allegedly violated 243.6 of the California penal code, which is battery committed against a school employee. The violation is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail, or by a fine up to $2,000 or both.
Tarte was pushed two times, according to Sean Prather.
“He did a lot of things wrong,” said Prather, “but he was arrested for assaulting an instructor.”
“I felt it necessary to place him under citizen’s arrest and I did,”
Tarte said. “He was cited in the field since there was no injury to me.”
The student who was the object of the suspect’s anger did not press charges, according to Tarte.