Body-Cam Video Shows 6-Year-Old Girl Crying, Pleading for Help as She Gets Arrested
Emma Tucker
Published Feb. 25, 2020
A body camera video uncovered on Tuesday reveals six-year-old Kaia Rolle forced into handcuffs and hauled into a police SUV while pleading for help at a Florida elementary school last September, in an arrest that sparked national outrage. Kaia is seen in the video crying and begging the officers to let her go.
“No ... no, don’t put handcuffs on!,” she screamed, after the officers fastened zip ties around her wrists. “Help me, help me, please!” Kaia, a first grader at Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy, reportedly had a tantrum that day and kicked three employees.
She was charged with misdemeanor battery, according to an arrest report. After the officers put Kaia in the backseat of the police SUV, Officer Dennis Turner returned to the school’s office and asked one employee for a statement.
“The restraints, are they necessary?” one of the school employees asked. Turner responded with, “If she was bigger, she would have been wearing regular handcuffs.” Turner proceeded to tell the school workers that the youngest person he had arrested was seven years old. Florida reportedly does not have a minimum age for arrest, but Orlando Police Department officials said Turner—who was fired after the incident—acted improperly by arresting a child younger than 12 without a supervisor’s approval.
Over the course of Turner’s 23-year tenure at OPD prior to retiring last year, he was disciplined seven times for violations of department policy that ranged from unsafe driving to a child-abuse arrest in which he was accused of injuring his 7-year-old son. He was also accused of sending threatening text messages to his ex-wife in 2009 and racial profiling, records show.
Read it at Orlando Sentinel
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/crime/os-ne-orlando-police-body-camera-6-year-old-arrest-20200224-rlg2ukttdvhehpoj2ki7irqe74-story.html
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