‘Little criminals’: In Florida, your kid’s chance of arrest at school depends on where you live | Special report

After a student was caught cutting class at Seminole High School’s ninth-grade center in April 2019, a trio of Sanford police officers told the girl to get in a golf cart so she could be taken back to campus.

She refused.

“I’m gonna walk,” she replied.

After she continued to ignore their orders, the officers handcuffed the 4-foot-10, 95-pound girl. Citing the disruption the incident caused and her attempts to slip out of the cuffs, they arrested her on charges of disturbing the peace and resisting an officer without violence.

About an hour’s drive south, at Denn John Middle School in Osceola County, two male classmates in May 2018 started arguing while other students gathered in the hallway to watch.

“I’m tired of you bullying me,” one yelled.

“Let’s go. I’m tired of you talking [expletive],” the other fired back.

When one of the students lunged at the other, a Kissimmee police officer who had told them to stop fighting used a leg sweep to throw him to the ground. The student was arrested on charges of conspiring to disrupt a school function and obstructing an officer without violence.

In Orlando, two 6-year-olds were arrested at a charter school in September, casting a harsh national spotlight on Florida’s juvenile justice system and prompting calls for reforming state laws to keep children out of handcuffs and squad cars.

A deeper look by the Orlando Sentinel reveals a patchwork of policies at the local level determine when children are arrested for schoolyard fights, threats and other minor offenses. Police agencies, school districts and judicial circuits govern when officers can intervene, when they can make arrests and what alternatives are available to them.

Put simply: Whether your child will be arrested for acting out depends on where you live. And children who are black — as is the Seminole High freshman, and at least one of the 6-year-olds arrested at Orlando’s Lucious & Emma Nixon Academy — stand a greater risk of arrest.

Four Central Florida counties — Orange, Seminole, Lake and Osceola — combined to arrest three times as many young people last year at schools, bus stops, on school transportation or at off-campus events than were arrested in Miami-Dade County, which has about the same number of students from 10 to 17 years old.

There is an alternative to student arrests: juvenile civil citations, which police can use to sanction kids without leaving them with criminal records. Experts say citations connect troubled kids with valuable resources, while helping to reduce recidivism, save money and relieve a burdened court system.

But their use varies widely across the state.

“When one child is getting a civil citation in one county and then another child is getting arrested in the next [county] for the exact same crime … it becomes difficult to make an argument for the use of civil citation,” said Christian Minor, executive director of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association.

When to arrest? Policies vary

Florida law allows officers to issue civil citations for misdemeanors by first-time offenders. The citation presses pause on the criminal case, redirecting the accused into a program that can involve counseling, monitoring and sanctions such as community service, restitution or an apology letter.

They can only be issued if the victim agrees not to press charges and the offender agrees they are guilty of the offense. Each county has its own requirements juvenile offenders must complete in order to avoid having their case sent to the prosecutor’s office.

The responsibility for establishing the guidelines for issuing civil citations and arrests — including what crimes are ineligible for citations — falls on the state’s 20 judicial circuits and their respective law enforcement agencies, meaning a child who would be eligible to avoid arrest in St. Petersburg might not be in Orlando.

For example: the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office issued civil citations to 100% of students for first-time misdemeanors last year. And this held true for every law enforcement agency within the county.

“Our sheriff thinks it’s a reflection of our policies and being proactive by our deputies,” Pinellas County sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Travis Sibley said. “For the last 15 years, having those policies in place is the reason why we lead the state.”

The Pinellas Sheriff’s Office encourages deputies to use diversionary programs, including civil citations, when dealing with first- to third-time offenders, an approach it applies to misdemeanors and some third-degree felonies. An annual study published earlier this year by the Caruthers Institute praised the county’s practices as a model for other agencies statewide to follow.

A 90-minute drive across Interstate 4, Osceola County authorities issued civil citations to only 40% of students for first-time misdemeanor offenses in 2019, while the remaining 60% were either arrested or their cases were submitted to the State Attorney’s Office to decide whether charges were warranted.

In neighboring Orange County — which shares a judicial circuit with Osceola — two-thirds of first-time misdemeanor student offenders were issued citations.

What happens to a child who receives a citation also varies from place to place.

In the 18th Circuit, comprised of Seminole and Brevard counties, two agencies — the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office and Sanford Police Department — don’t allow deputies or officers to issue civil citations in the field. They require the child be transported to an assessment center — the juvenile equivalent of a booking center — before being released to a parent or adult, which means a ride in a law enforcement vehicle.

Seminole sheriff spokeswoman Kim Cannaday said taking a juvenile who is acting out to the intake facility is critical because it provides a speedy resolution to the issue.

“We need to get to the bottom of what is occurring,” she said. “Kids act out for a reason.”

But LeRoy Pernell, a professor and former dean at FAMU Law, said the harm done to a child by being taken away from school in a police car can’t easily be undone.

“There’s been some attempts by state attorney’s offices to say, ‘We’re going to try controlling our end regarding kids who are inappropriately arrested by processing now as a civil case,'” he said. “Those things are fine, but that’s sort of closing the door after you’ve done a lot of damage.”

‘Little criminals’

After the September arrests at the Nixon Academy in Orlando, 6-year-old Kaia Rolle became the face of a debate about that has been left unsettled in Florida law: When it comes to arrests, how young is too young?

Police said Kaia had kicked school employees during a tantrum. The outrage that initially followed her arrest was renewed when video of the girl pleading for help while being loaded into a police SUV was made public by her family in February.

State lawmakers filed a bill during the recently concluded session that would have set a minimum age for arrests in Florida, something 21 other states already have.

But despite the advocacy of Meralyn Kirkland, Kaia’s grandmother, the legislation was watered down repeatedly — decreasing the proposed minimum age to arrest from 12 to 10, then to 6 — and the bill later fell victim to squabbling between the House and Senate.

Kirkland, who had traveled to Tallahassee with her granddaughter to tell her story, never got the chance to testify. But state Sen. Randolph Bracy, D-Ocoee, who filed the bill, hopes to try again next session.

“There are people, unfortunately, who believe we should be able to arrest 12-year-olds, 10-year-olds and even 8-year-olds. It was already quite a task to get them to agree to set the age to 6 years old,” Bracy said. “That’s just how things are done in Florida.”

Lt. Michael Marden of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and president of the Florida Association of School Resource Officers, said the citation program, as an arrest alternative, has “benefited the kids wholeheartedly.”

In Lake County, 64% of the 192 juveniles accused of first-time school-based misdemeanors were given civil citations in 2018-19. For misdemeanor assault or battery it was 43%.

“We’re moving towards the decrease in the actual amount of criminal histories in juveniles and we’re getting [them] the help that the kids need,” he said.

Minor, of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association, agreed the intervention process is an effective way to diagnose mental health concerns, behavioral problems, or substance abuse issues — and a positive alternative to “seeing kids arrested for behavioral problems.”

Students who have negative encounters with police are left with a stigma of being “little criminals” that is difficult to shake off and often sets the stage for the rest of their lives, said Pernell. And data shows black children like Kaia interact with local police disproportionately to their white peers.

“That pipeline between schools and the justice system is full of racial disparity,” Pernell said, adding that arrest alternatives could help address that. “But it really ultimately needs to be in conjunction with getting our system to consider more ways or different ways of dealing with kids other than calling the police on them.”

In Orange County, black students were roughly 25% of the student population in 2018-19. But they represented just under half of the school-related disorderly conduct incidents involving first-time offenders and about half of misdemeanor assaults and battery cases.

In Seminole County, black students made up just 15% of the student population. But they represented 80% of the school-related disorderly conduct incidents involving first-time offenders and 41% of misdemeanor assaults and batteries.

In Lake County schools, black students also make up 15% of the population but comprised about half of the incidents involving first-time offenders for assault or battery and disorderly conduct.

Kelly Welch, an associate sociology and criminology professor at Villanova University who researches school discipline, said situations like the one that led to Kaia’s arrest may reflect a trend among some in law enforcement of treating black youth “as being older than they really are.”

“Research shows that all races and ethnicities act out at about similar rates, but the punishments are so much harsher for black youth in particular,” she said. “It’s really the stereotype of youth of color being older that can make disciplinary and arrest decisions harsher.”

Officers have discretion

Most of the school arrests statewide are for misdemeanor battery, which is often attributed to school fights, or assault, which typically involves a threat with no physical violence. First-time student offenders across the state were issued a civil citation 72% of the time in fiscal year 2018-19, according to the Department of Juvenile Justice.

Officers should have the last word on when to issue citations or make an arrest in schools, said Marden, of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

In addition to cases in which a victim’s parent wants to press charges, a school officer also might opt for an arrest to set an example for other students: for example, when a student deliberately waits until everyone is in the cafeteria to start a brawl, Marden said.

“It’s not like the kids don’t know they’re not supposed to fight on campus, but it’s not just ‘meet me behind the bleachers’ anymore,” he said. “It’s, ‘I’m going to do it so I have an audience.'”

Because much of the juvenile justice system is confidential, the individual circumstances of these arrests are often cloaked in secrecy. However, cases involving adult students shed light on how a schoolyard scrap can escalate to a police matter, ending in an arrest.

For example: Last February, a black football player at Evans High in Orange County refused a dean’s orders to report to the cafeteria after a fight had broken out in the courtyard area, according to a report.

The dean suspended the student for disobeying orders and using vulgar language, asking the school resource officer to escort the recently turned 18-year-old off the campus. As the officer placed his hand on the student’s back, the student yelled, “Get your hands off me.” The officer then handcuffed him, before arresting him on charges of disturbing the peace, resisting an officer without violence and assault on a law enforcement officer.

The student’s family hired a criminal defense attorney, and he was placed in a post-arrest diversion program, which meant he would not be convicted. But the arrest remains on his adult record.

Some agreements between Central Florida school districts and law enforcement agencies establish that cops should not involve themselves in disciplinary matters that can be handled by the school administration. And law enforcement officials stress that their goal is not to take on that role.

“We totally remove ourselves from any of the administrative roles or disciplinary procedures by the school,” Orange County Sheriff John Mina said last month at a town hall organized by the Orlando Sentinel.

But, while a school’s principal can give input, when police become involved in an incident on campus it’s ultimately up to the officer or deputy to decide whether to pursue the case criminally or allow the school to handle the matter, Orange County Public Schools spokesman Michael Ollendorff said.

“The state requires that we consult with law enforcement [for certain offenses],” Ollendorff said in an email. “We cannot comment as to why school resource officers and law enforcement officer[s] take some cases and why others do not.”

Policing changed after Parkland

After the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the Florida Legislature passed laws that required an officer or armed guard at every public and charter school. To reach this goal, the state funded the armed security for the 2018-2019 school year.

In previous years, school-related arrests had been trending downward, but that reversed in some Central Florida counties in 2018-2019. Lake, for example, experienced a five-year high for school-related arrests — nearly 80 more cases than the year before — while having the fewest arrests of juveniles outside a school-related setting in the same time frame.

Some civil rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, argue that the presence of police on campus makes children far more likely to be arrested at school rather than face traditional discipline.

Welch, the Villanova University professor, said officers should only be at a minority of schools where “community crime is very high.”

“After some of these notable mass shootings at schools, everyone is understandably very concerned about wanting to do something. This seems like a quick and easy fix, but it does nothing to decrease school violence,” Welch said. “What it does is it criminalizes more students.”

Lake County Public Schools had 68 school resource officers for 51 schools in 2018-2019, according to the Department of Education’s report on the Safe Schools program. Orange County had 222 officers in 196 schools in the same time period, and Osceola stationed 79 officers on 70 campuses.

While Orange and Osceola school-related arrest numbers stayed relatively flat, Seminole’s arrests increased to where they were two years ago.

The Seminole public school district, which had school resource officers on every campus before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act was implemented, used the state funding to add more security at the high school level. For nine high schools, the district had 45 SROs in 2018-19.

Only two other districts in the state had more, Miami-Dade and Broward, and their enrollment was four to five times as many students.

Seminole High was among the schools with the most arrests in Florida in 2017-18, with 15 felonies and 43 misdemeanors, according to Department of Juvenile Justice data. It has among the largest high school enrollments in the state, having grown from 3,300 to 3,800 in a year due to the opening of a new ninth grade campus.

In the previous year, there were 15 felony and 27 misdemeanor arrests, not including ones for violations of probation due to curfew or missing class.

One incident at the school in May 2019 ended with a teenager being stunned with a Taser in a hallway bustling with students.

That incident that began with two black male students being told not to hang out at the bottom of a stairwell. Several police officers were involved in arresting the students.

They were initially issued civil citations — after being taken from school by police, as Seminole County’s policy requires — but they did not complete the requirements, meaning their cases ended with an arrest record, an incident report shows.

Welch said school arrests can result from inconsistent training and rules governing how to deal with students who act out in school.

“I think training officers about how to productively interact with kids, how to protect kids, would be very useful,” she said. “But I don’t think they can focus only on that. I think there also needs to be a balanced approach so that teachers or administrators feel empowered to help their own students.”

School districts have their own guidelines for what types of incidents are reported to law enforcement. Most in Central Florida leave it up to school officials whether to involve police in fights between students, though, starting this school year, Osceola’s school district made it mandatory to report fights to law enforcement.

Florida law allows school districts to define what it considers a “threat to school safety” versus “petty acts of misconduct” that don’t require police intervention.

But changes to the Stoneman Douglas Act in 2019 ensured minor fights were no longer excluded from zero tolerance policies, leading Osceola school officials to adopt the fight-reporting mandate, district spokeswoman Dana Schafer said in an email to the Sentinel.

“A prudent person would conclude that physical fights do pose a threat to school safety for all students affected,” Schafer said.

creyes-rios@orlandosentinel.com

achen@orlandosentinel.com

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the percentage of school-related first-time disorderly conduct, misdemeanor assault and battery cases involving black students in Orange County.