Man Arrested For Posting Videos To Social Media In Response To Student Photo Featuring Confederate Flag, Swastika

RIVERSIDE (CBSLA) — A man was under arrest Wednesday after driving through the parking lot at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside and recording himself talking about racist bullying on campus.

"This is ground zero right here," 38-year-old Maurice Gamble, of Riverside, said in one of the videos.

Some parents considered that phrase a terrorist threat. Police said it was posted online in response to a photo taken off campus, but circulated to other students, that showed their fellow classmates posing in front of a Trump 2020 banner, a Confederate flag and one of them holding up a swastika.

"It was awful, and it was wrong," one student said. "Nobody should have posted that. It's not a joke."

That student said everyone on campus was talking about the photo, but it was Gamble's social media posts that were disturbing enough that there was a 20% drop in attendance Wednesday.

"It was very empty, and there was a tense feeling," the student said.

The school's principal originally sent out a video message about the photo. The district would not say whether it too any disciplinary action against the teenagers, but a number of parents said some of them were suspended.

"We had a really small group of kids that made a really bad choice, a really insensitive choice," Ryan Railsback, a Riverside officer, said.

Railsback said the students did not commit a crime by taking the photo, but he said Gamble had previously taken a video inside of a gun store.

"A records check of the suspect shows he happens to be an ex-felon," Railsback said.

The officers obtained a search warrant for the man's home and said they found several firearms inside. The man has been charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and making criminal threats.

"I think we should learn from it," the student said. "And it should never happen again."