Orlando Sgt. didn’t know juvenile rules
Allowed cop to arrest 6-year-old at school without contacting watch commander
An Orlando police sergeant who allowed reserve Officer Dennis Turner to arrest a 6-year-old at a charter school in September was disciplined recently after admitting he didn’t know the department’s policy on arresting juveniles at the time.
An Internal Affairs investigation obtained by the Orlando Sentinel Wednesday evening shows Turner and Officer Sergio Ramos contacted Sgt. Douglas Andreacchi, Ramos’ supervisor, during at least one of two arrests of children Turner made at the school that day. However, Andreacchi
didn’t contact the on-duty watch commander for approval, as policy required when arresting a child younger than 12, records show.
At the conclusion of the investigation, Andreacchi was given an 8-hour suspension, records show. Turner was fired days after the arrests, which prompted a national firestorm of outrage.
The Sentinel obtained the documents days after publishing body camera video of 6-year-old Kaia Rolle’s arrest, which showed her wailing as Turner and Ramos zip-tied
her hands behind her back and led her to a police cruiser outside the charter school, where Turner was working as a school resource officer that week.
“No … no, don’t put handcuffs on!” she cried as Ramos bound her hands.
She pleaded with school staff to help her, but they stood by. A few minutes later, after Turner and Ramos placed her in the patrol car, Turner went back inside and joked with staff that Kaia had “broken the record” for the youngest person he had ever arrested. The youngest before Kaia was 7, he said.
Police said Kaia had a tantrum at the school, where she attended first grade, and had punched and kicked three employees. But Kaia was calm by the time Turner and Ramos came to arrest her on a misdemeanor battery charge.
She was taken to the juvenile jail, where she was processed and given a stepstool so employees could take her mugshot, her grandmother has said. Details about the arrest of the other child, who was also 6, have not been made public, though OPD has said officials stopped the arrest process before he was booked.
The day of the arrests, OPD spokesman Sgt. David Baker said in an email supervisors became aware of the incident “during the arrest process.”
“Pursuant to OPD policy, the arrest of any person under the age of 12 requires the approval of the Watch Commander, which was not obtained in this case,” Baker said.
OPD investigator Christopher Carty wrote in a summary of the internal investigation that Andreacchi “was contacted by Officer Ramos and Reserve Officer Dennis Turner in regard to the arrest” of one of the children, and that he never contacted the watch commander, Lt. Brian Donohue, or a School Resource Section commander.
He also “never gave an order to [Turner] to not arrest” the child, Carty wrote. At the end of an interview with investigators, Carty said Andreacchi “admitted that he did not remember” OPD’s juvenile arrest policy.
Turner violated the same policy, having “never requested or attempted to contact the on-duty watch commander” or the School Resource commander, Carty wrote. He also failed to turn on his body camera during the arrest of the second child, violating another agency policy.
Turner declined to be interviewed by internal investigators, according to the records.
Ramos, who “expressed his concern about the arrest” to Andreacchi, was exonerated after Carty determined he “was never given instruction not to proceed with the prison transportation.”
At a press conference three days after the incident, OPD Chief Orlando Rolón said “corrective action was taken immediately” after the arrests and that Turner had been fired from the agency. Reserve officers like Turner are employed at the will of the chief and are not represented by the police union.
“As the chief of police one of the top priorities is to earn and protect the trust between the community and its officers. Because of this incident, the trust has been put in question,” Rolón said at the press conference.
After records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel showed Turner had returned to Lucious & Emma Nixon the day after the arrests and worked for 4 hours, Rolón conceded that “the administrative process to ensure that Reserve Office Turner’s extra-duty privileges had been terminated had not been followed.”
OPD changed its juvenile arrest policy after the incident to require officers get permission from one of four deputy chiefs before arresting anyone under 12.