Originally published 2020-08-12.
In August 2020, civil rights attorney Ben Crump posted body-camera footage showing police officers in Key West, Florida, trying to handcuff an eight-year-old boy at his elementary school. The incident itself had happened in December 2018. The boy, who his lawyers say has special needs, had allegedly hit a teacher in the chest. He was arrested on a felony battery charge, walked to a patrol car and booked. The cuffs would not stay on because his wrists were too small. Here is what the video shows, what each side said, and what research tells us about using police and fear to correct young children.
What happened at Gerald Adams Elementary
According to the arrest report described in news coverage, police were called to Gerald Adams Elementary School, a public school on Stock Island just outside Key West, on 14 December 2018. During lunch in the cafeteria, the boy had reportedly refused to sit properly, ignored a teacher's instructions and then punched her in the chest. The report noted no obvious injury to the teacher.
An officer wrote that, when he saw the child in the school office, the boy looked ready to fight. Officers decided to arrest him. The child was charged with felony battery, a serious-sounding charge that reflects how Florida law treats battery on a school employee more harshly than an ordinary scuffle.
Because he is a minor, the boy has not been publicly named.
What the footage shows
The released video is short and hard to watch. Officers try to put handcuffs on the boy, but his wrists are too thin for them to hold. One officer remarks that it is "not worth it." The child is then led out to a police car while an officer lectures him about how serious his behaviour was.
Crump shared the clip on Twitter on 10 August 2020, describing the officers' approach as "scared straight" tactics. His post gave the boy's size at the time as about three and a half feet tall and 64 pounds.
Unbelievable!! @KWPOLICE used “scared straight” tactics on 8yo boy with special needs. He's 3.5 ft tall and 64 lbs, but they thought it was appropriate to handcuff and transport him to an adult prison for processing!! He was so small the cuffs fell off his wrists! pic.twitter.com/iSTlXdKas6
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) August 10, 2020
One detail in that post needs care. Crump wrote that the boy was taken to an adult jail for processing. The Key West Police Department said he was booked into a juvenile justice facility. Both accounts agree he was taken from school and formally processed.
The family's side: a support plan that was not followed
Crump and Pennsylvania attorney Devon Jacobs said they would represent the boy and planned a federal lawsuit against the Key West Police Department and the Monroe County School District.
Their central claim was that the school failed him before police ever arrived. The boy had an Individualized Education Program (IEP), a legally binding plan in US public schools that sets out the support a child with a disability must receive. Crump said the boy was placed with a substitute teacher who did not know about that plan and who physically moved him, which escalated the situation. The arrest report, as reported, did not mention his special needs at all.
Jacobs, a former police officer, said publicly that he was appalled by how the officers behaved.
The police response and the public reaction
Key West Police Chief Sean Brandenburg defended his officers. Speaking to the Miami Herald, he said: "Based on the report, standard operating procedures were followed."
That answer did not settle the matter for many viewers. Politicians, educators and parents across the country questioned why a procedure would treat a small child like an adult suspect. Former San Antonio mayor and Housing Secretary Julián Castro shared the video and argued that police should have no role in punishing children in schools.
Unbelievable.
— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) August 10, 2020
Police in Key West tried to put an 8-year-old boy in handcuffs and transport him to jail to “scare him straight.”
Police should have no role in punishing our kids or pulling traumatic stunts like this in our schools. pic.twitter.com/2gFzHlvwLL
The video spread during a summer of nationwide protests against police violence. Those protests began on 26 May 2020, the day after George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was murdered in Minneapolis when officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. Chauvin was convicted of murder in April 2021.
Does "scaring kids straight" work?
The phrase comes from a 1978 documentary, Scared Straight!, in which teenagers visited a New Jersey prison and were confronted by inmates. The idea that a frightening brush with the justice system will keep young people out of trouble has been tested many times since. The results are consistent and the opposite of what supporters hope.
- A Cochrane systematic review led by Anthony Petrosino, updated in 2013, found that young people exposed to these programmes were more likely to offend afterwards than similar young people who were not.
- The UK College of Policing rates the evidence that such schemes increase crime as very strong.
- In 2011, two senior US Justice Department officials wrote that the programmes are ineffective and potentially harmful, urging policymakers to follow evidence rather than anecdote.
Those studies looked mostly at teenagers, not eight-year-olds. But the principle carries over: fear and humiliation are poor teachers, and a child who already struggles with self-control may learn to see adults and police as threats rather than helpers.
Children, disability and school discipline
Education researchers use the term "school-to-prison pipeline" for a pattern in which school discipline problems are handled by police and courts rather than by teachers, counsellors and support staff. Children with disabilities and Black children have been shown in US federal civil rights data to be referred to law enforcement and arrested at school at higher rates than their classmates.
For a young child with an IEP, outbursts are often linked to the very condition the plan is meant to support. That is why such plans usually include calming strategies, trained staff and steps to follow before any outside agency is called. When those steps are skipped, a classroom incident can become a police record.
What parents and schools can take from this case
- Know the plan. Parents of children with IEPs can ask the school how substitutes and new staff are told about a child's needs.
- Ask about police policy. Families can ask when the school calls law enforcement and whether officers are trained to deal with young children and disabilities.
- Use de-escalation first. Calm voices, space and a familiar adult usually work better than confrontation, especially for younger children.
- Keep records. If something goes wrong, written notes and copies of plans make it easier to get help from advocates or lawyers.
Hitting a teacher is not acceptable, and schools have a duty to keep staff safe. The question this video raised for many viewers is whether handcuffs and a patrol car were the right answer for a child of eight.
Sources: Daily Kos summary of Miami Herald, NBC News and Washington Post reporting (11 August 2020); Ben Crump on Twitter; Wikipedia: Scared Straight! (Petrosino 2013 review, College of Policing, US DOJ); Wikipedia: Murder of George Floyd.
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