Police officer handcuffs and arrests 6-year-old child after ‘tantrum’ at school

Dennis Turner has history of child abuse and violence

A police officer is under investigation after arresting two children, aged six and eight (Google Maps)

A police officer in Florida is under investigation after he arrested two children, aged six and eight, in separate episodes at a school on Thursday, police said.

The officer, Dennis Turner, has been suspended pending the outcome of an internal investigation, Orlando Rolón, the police chief, said in a statement.

Mr Turner was working as a school resource officer at a charter school in Orlando when he arrested the children, Mr Rolón said.

Mr Turner was assigned to the reserve officer programme. Details of the programme were unavailable, but the Orlando Sentinel reported that it is made up of retired officers from the Orlando Police Department.

Departmental policy requires officers to get a supervisor’s approval when arresting anyone under the age of 12.

During the arrest of the eight-year-old, the transporting officer was unaware that Mr Turner had failed to get a supervisor’s approval, the chief said.

The child was processed through the juvenile assessment centre and released to a relative shortly after, Mr Rolón said.

The gender of the child and what led to the arrest were not disclosed. Police did not release the children’s names.

The officer who transported the six-year-old to the centre verified that Mr Turner had not received approval for the arrest and immediately halted the process. According to Mr Rolón, the child was returned to school before being processed.

“As a grandparent of three children less than 11 years old, this is very concerning to me,” he said.

Meralyn Kirkland told the television station WKMG that the six-year-old, her granddaughter Kaia, was arrested after having a tantrum at the charter school, Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy.

Ms Kirkland said she received a call informing her that Kaia had kicked a staff member at the school, had been charged with battery and was on her way to the juvenile assessment centre.

Ms Kirkland said she tried to explain to Mr Turner that her granddaughter had sleep apnoea, a sleep disorder, and that they were working to resolve it.

She told the station that Mr Turner had responded, “Well, I have sleep apnoea, and I don’t behave like that.”

“No six-year-old child should be able to tell somebody that they had handcuffs on them and they were riding in the back of a police car,” Ms Kirkland said.

Mr Turner served on the police force for 23 years and retired in June 2018, according to the department. By the end of his career, he was earning more than $100,000 (£80,250) a year, according to a database of public officials’ salaries maintained by the Orlando Business Journal.

Mr Turner was charged with aggravated child abuse in 1998 in connection with his seven-year-old son, the Orlando Sentinel reported. He was suspended pending the outcome of the investigation, The Sentinel reported, but the disposition of the case was unclear on Sunday.

In 2016, he was reprimanded for using excessive force after stunning a man five times with a Taser during an arrest, the newspaper reported.

Neither Mr Turner nor Ms Kirkland could be reached for comment on Sunday.

Administrators at the charter school, which serves students aged five to 11, did not respond to calls or emails on Sunday.

Dr Victor Fornari, vice chairman for child and adolescent psychiatry at Northwell Health’s Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York, said it was hard to argue that children as young as six or eight could merit being arrested.

The mental health system – not the criminal justice system – is the one commonly relied on in a situation like this, he said.

“Arresting them and putting them under handcuffs is traumatising,” he said. “There’s no clinical benefit to the child or society.”

The New York Times