The president of a New Jersey teacher's union has been caught on video admitting he would "bend" the truth, change a "punch" to a "shove," backdate statements, warn teachers to "not tell a soul" and stall proceedings to ensure security cameras record over a contested incident.
All in order to defend "even the worst people," according to a new undercover sting by James O'Keefe's Project Veritas.
With teachers in multiple states walking off the job in demand of higher pay and better benefits in recent weeks, their unions came to the attention of O'Keefe, whose recent "American Pravda" series has focused on media bias.
O'Keefe's undercover operators engaged teachers' union officials in conversations, resulting in some stunning admissions.
"The unions would argue that they are protecting the institutions to protect the children," O'Keefe said. "But their actions and words are corrupt. The institutions are not the children. Teachers unions are interested in protecting themselves. It would be nice if [Hamilton Township Education Association President David] Perry were just one bad apple. That is certainly what we will hear in the media. But don’t believe it. If you do, then watch the rest of this series."
See the first video in the series:
The video, recorded March 27, shows Perry detailing the "steps the teacher's union would take to protect a teacher who physically abused and threatened middle school students from losing their job."
"Perry says he would misrepresent the events of altercations between teachers and students by back-dating reports and instructed the teacher to not tell anybody about incidents with students," Project Veritas said.
"By failing to report this incident, Dr. Perry may have broken the law. According to New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families, 'In New Jersey, any person having reasonable cause to believe a child has been subjected to abuse or acts of abuse should immediately report this information.'"
The report says Perry "stressed that a teacher who abuses his students needs to come to the union after any incident so that they can create a report that would best protect them from students that come forward about abuse."
When the Project Veritas undercover journalist asked what could be done to protect a teacher who severely abused a student physically, Perry said he would "bring it down a level" by misrepresenting the facts of the incident.
“We do turn [these reports] around to where, if it was a physical punch, it wasn’t a punch. It was a shove," he explains. And, "If [the teacher] comes to me tomorrow, I’m gonna date the report to the day after the incident."
There's a reason.
"I’m gonna strongly advise … [if] the kid’s gonna turn around and say ‘Well [the teacher] threatened me.’ ... I can say ‘No. No no no. On March 22nd, the day after the incident, [the teacher] came over to me and told me [what happened.] And we just wanted to put it on record so that nothing more would come about it.'"
He said, "It covers [the teacher!] Because he came in and reported it right away and that he was afraid. In other words, if you threatened the kid, you didn’t threaten the kid. You said 'Knock it off or else.'
"If [the teacher] actually said 'knock if off or I'll kill you,' or 'I'll beat the s--- out of you' or 'I'll hurt you' or 'I'll hurt your family,' we don’t say that. It's a mistake. It was out of the emotions. We don’t even log that in.
"I'm gonna let you know right now he came in the day after. Even though he didn’t, I would say he did. And the only record that this is, it stays here."
He explained he's working to "defend even the worst people," and he always needs a teacher who has misbehaved to tell him everything. He said he "need[s] to know the truth so that we can bend the truth."
He said the longer the complaint process drags on, the more likely it is there's no video.
It's because security camera footage gets erased every few weeks.
"In describing an instance where he has done this, Perry reveals he tries to trap students into claiming an incident happened on a Sunday, which would damage the credibility of the claim since school would not have been in session," Project Veritas said.