Teen arrested for 3rd time in four months
Had head slammed by deputy, now faces loitering charge
The teenager in the center of a firestorm after his head was slammed into the pavement by a Broward Sheriff’s deputy has been arrested for the third time in four months.
Delucca Rolle was arrested 3 a.m. Saturday after he and a friend were walking in a Margate neighborhood. When a Margate police officer approached, they first “went behind a palm tree and then back into the roadway,” according to an incident report.
Because neither teen lives nearby and it was the middle of the night, it “raised my alarm and fear for the persons and property in the area,” the officer wrote in the report.
Both teens live in North Lauderdale. Their names are redacted from the report.
Because neither would
tell the officer what they were doing in that neighborhood, they each face a charge of loitering and prowling, a misdemeanor.
“He is human, he has a right to life, he has a right to be outside,” Rolle’s lawyer, Sue-Anne Robinson, said Monday.
She accused the police of targeting the teen.
“I think he’s being harassed,” she said. “A loitering charge just reeks of harassment. And it’s ongoing, obviously.”
A Margate police spokesman said the arresting officer did not know one of the teens was Rolle.
The arrest was because of “the arrested individuals’ refusal to dispel the officer’s alarm for the safety of people and property in the area,” said Lt. Efrain Suarez.
Rolle made headlines in April when he was among scores of J.P. Taravella High students gathered across the street in Tamarac when the Sheriff’s Office intervened when a fight broke out.
Rolle’s forceful arrest sparked a national outcry: One deputy pepper-sprayed and punched the 15-year-old and another handcuffed him. The cellphone video of his head being slammed into the pavement was shared on social media.
Prosecutors decided not to pursue charges against Rolle less than a week after his arrest. The three deputies involved face charges.
In June, Rolle found himself in trouble in Lauderhill. The teen was accused of being in a stolen car and resisting an officer without violence, police said.
Officials said the car — a green 2005 Ford 500 — was stolen out of a Margate driveway using keys the owner had left in another car that was unlocked. Margate police said the likely thief had left behind a Huffy bicycle.
Rolle’s mother said her son ran because he was afraid of police and didn’t know the car his friend was driving was stolen.
That case is still pending, Robinson said.