Florida police handcuffed boy, 8, with special needs, used 'scared straight' tactics: lawsuit

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Police officers from Florida seen arresting 8-year-old boy

Raw video: Bodycam footage from the Key West Police Department shows officers arresting an 8-year-old boy. The child was charged with felony battery for allegedly punching teacher in the chest.

The mother of a young boy in Florida has sued the local school and police officials for allegedly using “'scared straight’ tactics” on her then-8-year-old son who has special needs – handcuffing the boy and taking him to an “adult prison” after he was accused of assaulting his teacher, according to the family’s lawyers.

The child was only 8 years old, 3-foot-6 and 64 pounds when, in 2018, officers from the Key West Police Department allegedly placed him in handcuffs at school and told him, “You’re going to jail.”

Now 10, the boy's mother has retained prominent civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Devon M. Jacob, who have filed a federal lawsuit against the police department, school officials, the city of Key West and Monroe County School District, the attorneys announced during a Tuesday press conference.

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Police responded on Dec. 14, 2018, to Gerald Adams Elementary, where the boy allegedly punched a substitute teacher, according to Crump and an arrest report.

Police body camera footage of the arrest shows the officers arrive to find the shaggy-haired boy sitting down.

“You need to stand up and put your hands behind your back,” they tell him.

The officers appear to position the boy so he’s standing facing a filing cabinet with his hands against the metal in front of him. One of the officers tries to handcuff the boy, but later tells him, “Your hands are too small.”

The child cries as he stands with the officers. He can be heard asking for someone while police arrest him, and both attorneys confirmed on Tuesday that the boy was asking for his father, who was elsewhere in the building at the time. Meanwhile, his mother was in the hospital undergoing treatment.

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"He knew that his mother was in the hospital at the time and his father had actually arrived at the school, and he knew that at one point his father was somewhere in the building," Jacob said. "You'll hear that the police officers lied to him and told him he had already left."

The footage continues for another minute and 20 seconds after the boy starts crying, as police walk the boy out of the school as people who appear to be school staff members look on.

The child's mom, Bianca DiGennaro, said Tuesday that she's "heartbroken," and that the police "tried to make him a criminal, only being 8 years old, for being disabled."

"I wasn't there to protect my son from getting arrested, from going to an adult jail, being fingerprinted, having his mouth swabbed for DNA," she said. "My 8-year-old son has a mugshot out there and has DNA out there. He was put in a jail cell."

The boy, who was kept in the cell for a few minutes, later told his parents he remembers police "slamming the big door with the bars on it," Crump said.

Digennaro added her son has been diagnosed with severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, depression and anxiety, which, she said, "everybody knew."

The police report describes how the boy’s teacher was trying to correct the way he was sitting in his seat in the cafeteria. She then asked him to sit with her, but he would not. When the teacher approached to escort him to sit next to her, he initially agreed, but then told her, “My mom is going to beat your a--,” according to the report. He then allegedly used his right hand to punch her in the chest.

One of the officers who later arrived at the scene described in the police report how the child “had his hands clinched (sic) into fists and he was postured as if he was ready to fight."

Key West Police Chief Sean T. Brandenburg stood by the officers, saying in a statement to Fox News: “Based on the report, standard operating procedures were followed.” A spokesperson declined to comment regarding any pending litigation.

Roughly nine months after his arrest, the felony battery charge was nolle prossed - or withdrawn, the attorneys said.

Even two years later, Digennaro said she struggles with watching the video, which "never gets easier."

"I can tell and I can feel how scared my son was. It's impossible to watch," she said. "I would never want any other parent to have to watch a video like that about their 8-year-old son."

Crump, who also represents the family of George Floyd, previously called the arrest “unbelievable” and criticized the officers for thinking “it was appropriate to handcuff and transport him to an adult prison for processing,” he wrote in a tweet on Aug. 9, when he released the video.

In a press release shared on Twitter, Crump said the boy has behavioral and emotional disabilities that required an individualized educational plan with the school, which was “intended to make sure his educational experience was appropriate for him."

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“Instead of honoring and fulfilling that plan, the school placed him with a substitute teacher who had no awareness or concern about his needs and who escalated the situation by using her hands to forcibly move him,” Crump said. “When he acted out, the teacher called the police, who threatened him with jail and tried to put him in handcuffs, which fell off because he was too little.”

A school official told the Miami Herald they were not aware of any involvement in litigation regarding the case, but otherwise declined to comment "due to the possibility of this matter becoming a legal issue in the future."