School mask policy incident in 2021 results in conviction on disorderly conduct, other charges

A South Greensburg man was acquitted this week of two assault counts related to a 2021 incident at Hempfield Area High School in which he got into an altercation with school police while demanding to deliver a letter related to the district’s mask policy.

Richard M. Bettis, 58, was convicted of resisting arrest, defiant trespass, disorderly conduct and harassment during a nonjury trial.

Bettis was charged in connection with the Sept. 10, 2021, incident by state police.

Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio ruled that school officers were justified in having Bettis step outside of the building to assess the situation and avoid disruption to the school day. The officers offered to have an administrator come outside to talk to him about the letter he wanted to drop off, she said.

“(Bettis), however, refused to leave once he was directed to do so and, instead, wished to stay and protest, which required the officers to forcibly push the defendant out of the building, all the while (Bettis was) resisting and refusing to leave,” she wrote in an order.

Bilik-DeFazio found that prosecutors failed to present enough evidence to support the aggravated and simple assault charges. Troopers said a school police officer was treated at the scene for a cut on his arm suffered during the altercation.

Bettis will be sentenced at a later date. He was not a guardian or parent of a child at the school, police said.

Days before the incident, some students at the school left the building to protest a mask mandate levied by the state connection with the coronavirus pandemic. That mandate required masks for everyone at schools and day care centers while indoors regardless of vaccination status.