The family of Kaia Rolle, a Florida child whose handcuffing and arrest at the age of 6 led to national outrage in 2019, filed a lawsuit today against the city of Orlando, the now-fired police officer who handcuffed and arrested her, and his supervisors.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lawsuit<\/a>, filed in a Florida state circuit court, alleges Rolle was subjected to excessive force, false arrest, and malicious prosecution. At a press conference today in Orlando, Rolle’s lawyers and family, as well as civil rights activists, also called on Florida to raise its minimum age of arrest for children.<\/span><\/p>\n

“This happened,” Rolle’s lawyer, Bobby DiCello, said, holding up a picture of Rolle crying in the back of a police cruiser with her wrists bound behind her. “And it’s happening all across America.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Rolle’s alleged crime was throwing a tantrum and striking three employees at an Orlando-area charter school.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Body camera footage<\/span><\/a> of the incident showed former Orlando police officer Dennis Turner and another officer putting zip ties around the small child’s wrists and leading her outside to a police car as she cried and begged to be let go.<\/span><\/p>\n

“What are those for?” Rolle, who was in first grade at the time, asks as the officer brings out zip ties.<\/span><\/p>\n

“They’re for you,” Turner responded.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rolle was charged with misdemeanor battery. The charges were quickly dropped.<\/span><\/p>\n

The national condemnation that poured in after the story went viral led to the officer’s <\/span>firing<\/span><\/a>, and after two years of lobbying from Rolle’s family and other advocates, Florida created a minimum age of arrest for children.<\/span><\/p>\n

As <\/span>Reason <\/span><\/i>has <\/span>previously reported<\/span><\/a>, in many states, there is no minimum age for when a child can be arrested and charged with a crime, although incidents like Rolle’s have led several states to strengthen protections for children in recent years.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2021, the city of Rochester, New York, released body camera footage of officers <\/span>pepper-spraying a handcuffed 9-year-old girl<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In North Carolina, an investigation by the <\/span>Raleigh News and Observer<\/span><\/i> revealed<\/span><\/a> that children as young as 6 had been charged with crimes. The story’s lead anecdote involved a 6-year-old boy charged with destruction of property for picking a tulip.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Florida’s new minimum age for arrest is 7 years old. Rolle almost immediately aged out of the law named after her.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The law we fought so hard to put in place doesn’t even protect her,” Rolle’s grandmother, Meralyn Kirkland, said at the press conference.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rolle’s family and juvenile justice advocates are asking for the minimum age of arrest in Florida to be raised to 14 years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

The post Family of 6-Year-Old Florida Girl Handcuffed at Orlando School Files Lawsuit<\/a> appeared first on Reason.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kaia Rolle’s ordeal led Florida to raise its minimum age of arrest to 7 years old, but her family and activists say that’s not nearly high enough. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[19,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94143"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}