Anti-masker accused of child abuse at Fort Lauderdale High School

Dan Bauman was arrested for child abuse at Fort Lauderdale High School after he started filming a student.

A known critic of Broward County schools’ mandatory mask policy was arrested Wednesday morning and accused of child abuse without great bodily harm after a student tried to stop him from filming her at the entrance of Fort Lauderdale High School.

A police report shows the school resource officer flipped on his body camera when he saw Dan Bauman, 50, coming.

“The def (defendant) is known to cause disruption due to protesting the School Board mask policy,” Officer Paul Johnson wrote in the report.

Fort Lauderdale police said a student, whose name was redacted from the report, walked up to Bauman and told him that she’d had enough for four days and attempted to grab his cellphone.

“… the def then pushed the child by the shoulder and grabbed her hand and twisting her arm in an aggressive manner which cause me and the security to pull the def off the child,” the report says.

Broward County School District was the first to take on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ emergency order that was supposed to stop districts from requiring school masks despite their parents’ wishes. Only those students who have a doctor’s note can opt out of wearing a mask, according to Broward’s policy. Nine other districts have since followed suit in defiance of the Governor.

Dozens of parents showed up at the administrative offices in Palm Beach County schools on Monday to protest the new mandatory policy starting that day, the Sun Sentinel reported.

Broward schools are currently under a state order that will take away an amount of state aid equal to School Board members’ salaries. School officials said they are currently seeking avenues to challenge the order.

Broward School officials said they are not encountering widespread opposition to its mandatory mask policy at the schools similar to this incident. School officials reported just one student did not comply with the policy on the first day of school last week.

Bauman was taken to the county’s Main Jail after the incident. He was still being held on $5,000 bail Thursday morning.

The first probable cause affidavit from the Fort Lauderdale police reported the wrong charge Wednesday. The police provided an update Thursday morning, saying the correct charge in this case was child abuse without great bodily harm.