Girl’s arrest justified big change, but lawmakers haven’t delivered
Every time the Legislature convenes to make new laws, it has an opportunity to do good. To make Florida better.
This year, it could have approved a new law limiting the ability of police to arrest little kids.
It requires a hard heart to think it’s OK for a cop to zip tie a 6-year-old in school, march the terrified child into a squad car, snap her mug shot, take her fingerprints and then detain her. All because she threw a tantrum earlier.
That’s what happened at a charter school right here in Orlando last September. And that’s what a pair of bills in the state House and Senate would have stopped except in rare circumstances.
That opportunity to do good, to make Florida better, might get squandered by lawmakers who, so far, could only bring themselves to approve a weak substitute.
Instead of a new law that prevents cops from arresting little kids, an amendment was tacked onto a separate bill that only requires law enforcement agencies to have a policy for arresting kids 10 years old or younger.
This amendment’s title: the Kaia Rolle Act, named for the little girl who was arrested by an Orlando Police Department reserve officer at the Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy after she had a tantrum, striking school staffers in the process.
Kaia was in Tallahassee earlier this week with her grandmother, Meralyn Kirkland, for a Senate hearing on the original bill, the one that would have prevented police from arresting kids like Kaia.
They drove for hours to get there then waited more hours to testify Tuesday in front of a state Senate committee, which never got around to the measure. Instead, South Florida Rep. Kionne McGhee was able on Wednesday to get the amendment pasted onto a different bill moving through the state House.
A small victory, we suppose. Smaller still when you consider Orlando police already had a policy in place when a reserve officer, Dennis Turner, arrested Kaia. Orlando officers were supposed to get approval from a watch commander before arresting anyone under 12. According to Orlando’s investigation, Turner told a sergeant, who never contacted the commander on duty. Turner was fired; the sergeant was given a suspension.
Even if the watch commander had been contacted, they could have signed off on the arrest, which is why the law needs to be clear that Florida does not arrest little children unless, as the original bill stated, they pose a threat to someone else.
Kaia’s grandmother said the girl — who had sleep apnea — had calmed down by the time police came to take her away.
“When she was arrested she was fully out of the tantrum, sitting at a table trying to stay awake with a paper and crayons in front of her when the officers walked in, got a frightened 6-year-old up out of her chair and told her to turn around,” Kirkland said at a recent Orlando Sentinel town hall on school safety.
“She started crying immediately. ‘What are those handcuffs for, are they for me?’ ‘Yes, you’re under arrest.’ And she’s looking at all the staff asking them to ‘help me, help me,’ crying, ‘Help me, I’m afraid. I don’t want to go.’ ”
Police body-cam video bears out Kirkland’s account. A police document recounted one officer — not Turner — telling the sergeant on duty that Kaia “looks like a baby.” And still Kaia was arrested.
Sometimes policies aren’t good enough, as Kaia’s experience shows. Sometimes an idea — like arresting children for tantrums — is so repugnant that the state needs to intervene with a law.
But the House Bill filed by Rep. Anna Eskamani, of Orlando, never got a committee vote. Same with the Senate bill filed by Sen. Randolph Bracy, of Ocoee.
Considering the Legislature’s willingness to endlessly debate lightweight matters like specialty license plates — which the House did on Wednesday — it could have spent some more time on bills that addressed something as fundamental as arresting kids.
Yes, the House did take action, which is more than we can say for the Senate. And Kirkland was gracious in her reaction to the amendment, saying “It is the first step. Everything takes steps. I am just happy, very happy, that this first step has been positive.”
She and Kaia deserve that happiness, but they deserve more.
The lawmaking session isn’t over. There’s still time for House and Senate leaders to seize this chance to make Florida better.