Two years after a police officer arrested 6-year-old Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy Charter School student Kaia Rolle, her family told USA Today the little girl who loved to dance and was drawn to the spotlight is gone. In her place is an 8-year-old who suffers from "extreme post-traumatic stress disorder, separation anxiety, oppositional defiance disorder and phobias of simple things like bugs," the newspaper reported.
Meralyn Kirkland, the child's grandmother, said the family knows the little girl who once danced is in there. "We just don't know how to bring her out," Kirkland said.
Kaia and her family are not alone. More than 2,600 students from the age of 5 years old to 9 years old were arrested between 2000 and 2019, according to a report published in both USA Today and on the Center for Public Integrity's website on Thursday. The numbers amount to an average of 130 students arrested a year, as represented in records from more than 8,000 law enforcement agencies.
“It just makes no sense to involve law enforcement in a case against a 6- or 7-year-old,” William Lassiter, deputy commissioner of Juvenile Justice at the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, told USA Today. “The fundamental belief of our constitutional system is that if you’re standing trial, you need to understand what your rights are and how to participate in your defense. There’s just no way that a 6- or 7-year-old can do that.”
Video footage showed the now fired Orlando school resource officer Dennis Turner arresting Kaia in September 2019 after her teacher refused to let her wear sunglasses. The ordeal ended in Kaia throwing a tantrum and allegedly hitting staff members before attempting to run away. Turner said he witnessed some of the child's tantrum in police documents USA Today obtained. Orlando Police Officer Sergio Ramos was called to the school to transport Kaia to the Juvenile Assessment Center, but when he saw the child, he protested. “Sarge, this girl is tiny,” he reportedly told his superior. “She looks like a baby.”
Turner pushed that the arrest was necessary and that restraints were as well. He wrote in an affidavit USA Today obtained: “Victim Beverly H. Stoute stated both verbally (and) in a sworn written statement that Def. Rolle kicked her on the legs several times and punched her several times on both arms without permission. Stoute further stated she wanted to press charges and would testify in court.”
She later denied that account, saying: “I did not verbally say, ‘Hey, Reserve Officer Turner, I want to charge this little person with battery.’ No I did not.”
Kaia is still "terrified" of police, according to USA Today. She is on medication for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, and the family, which is in the midst of a lawsuit against the school, is running through Kirkland's retirement savings, dealing with depression, multiple hospitalizations, and an ongoing struggle to keep Kaia out of harm's way.
“Nobody thinks about how people’s lives have to go on after this,” Kirkland said. “They say, ‘Oh that’s terrible,’ and they go on with their lives. Everybody sweeps you under the rug, and they move on. We can’t.”
Malachi Pryor was 7 years old when he was handcuffed after "a shoving match" with another student in a Denver school, USA Today reported. He ended up thinking he was a bad kid. Evelyn Towry, who was diagnosed with a form of autism known as Asperger’s syndrome, was forced into a chair and handcuffed when she was 8 years old after she allegedly hit her Idaho teacher. She had wanted to wear a cow hoodie and was prevented from attending a class party as a result. When she was told she was being arrested because multiple batteries occurred, she screamed through tears at her mom: “What are batteries? What are batteries?”
The charges against Evelyn were dropped. More than 10 years later she told USA Today that she doesn't think being arrested led to lasting mental health issues, though she can’t believe children are still being detained.
“I feel quite alarmed and disgusted by how kids are being arrested,” Evelyn told USA Today. “It doesn’t matter what they do, they are children.”
Although an EdWeek study concluded that research is “mixed” on whether police officers actually improve safety at schools, “nearly 3 out of 4 teachers, principals, and district leaders say that they need armed school police officers in case someone comes into the building with the intent of doing harm to students and staff.”
An EdWeek analysis of federal data found that although Black students represented 16% of student populations and represented 33% of those arrested in schools in 2013-14,"the vast majority of survey respondents who work in districts where armed police officers are stationed at schools strongly believe that those officers treat students of color fairly."
USA Today pointed to Pamela Revels in explaining why. Revels, a school resource officer in Lee County, Alabama, for 17 years, was trained extensively to work with children, which only 38 states and territories require in some form, the newspaper reported. In one incident that Revels was called to handle, a child was repeatedly late for class. Revels’ norm is to lower her voice when speaking to a child acting out. She tells the child they are safe, and she tries to get at the root cause of the issue, she told USA Today. In the case of the child with frequent tardiness, she learned he struggled to see his locker combination because of his height and the upper row positioning of his locker. Revels helped the child get a lower locker.
“Not another tardy, not another problem,” she said.
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