Lawsuit filed in federal court over 8-year-old boy’s arrest
Lawyers for the mother of a now 10-year-old boy whom Key West police officers tried to handcuff in 2018 at his elementary school after he was accused of punching a teacher filed a civil-rights lawsuit Tuesday in federal court against the school district, the city, the officers involved as well as the teacher and two school officials.
The video of the incident at Gerald Adams Elementary School in Key West received national attention this week after the attorney for the mother, civil-rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, posted it on his Twitter account Monday morning.
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The video stoked anger over how police sometimes handle cases involving minors, including the handcuffing of a 6-year-old girl in Orlando at her school in September 2019.
The footage shows one officer placing the sobbing boy against a filing cabinet inside the school office, frisking him and then trying to put metal handcuffs on him, which were too big to fit the child’s wrists.
He is also heard telling the boy he’s “going to jail.” The boy was booked at a juvenile detention facility in Key West on a felony battery charge.
“He vividly remembers them slamming the big doors with the bars on them. That’s the perspective of an 8-year-old child,”
Crump said during an online press conference Tuesday.
The incident happened on Dec. 14, 2018. The Monroe County State Attorney’s Office decided not to prosecute the case about nine months after the arrest.
In addition to suing the city and school district, the legal action is against Officers Michael Malgrat, Kenneth Waite and Fred Sims, Glen Archer teacher Ashley Henriquez, Principal Fran
Herin and Assistant Principal Kyle Sheer.
According to the arrest report, Henriquez approached the boy in the school’s cafeteria because he was not sitting properly. When he wouldn’t listen to her, she went to get him to have him sit with her. This is when the boy punched her in the chest, Henriquez told police.
Crumpsaid the boy suffers from several psychiatric conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiance disorder.
The boy’s mother, Bianca Digennaro, said her son also has anxiety and depression, for which he takes two types of medications. She said her son’s teachers and the rest of the school staff were aware of his needs.
“Everybody knew this,” Digennaro said at the press conference.
Digennaro, 48, was in Miami-Dade County for a medical procedure when the incident occurred, she said Tuesday. She added that she finds it difficult to watch the video.
“I can tell and I can feel how scared my son was,” she said.