by
Nick Chiles
A
citizens panel in Portland, Ore., that investigates police misconduct is looking
into an incident from last year during which two officers arrested and
handcuffed a 9-year-old Black girl who had gotten into a fight with two other
girls outside a local Boys & Girls Club.
The
arrest on April 26, 2013, occurred when the mother of one of the girls called
police and demanded that the 9-year-old be arrested for hitting her child in
the face.
A
week later, Officers David McCarthy and Matthew Huspek questioned the girl and
arrested her on a fourth-degree assault charge.
The
girl was taken in handcuffs to police headquarters in a wet bathing suit, where
she was fingerprinted and photographed and put in a cell for an hour.
The
girl’s mother, Latoya Harris, was not allowed to ride in the patrol car with
her.
“When
they put handcuffs on, I thought, ‘Wait a minute, this has got to be a joke,’”
Harris told The Portland Oregonian. “The look on my daughter’s face went from
humiliation and fear, to a look of sheer panic.”
In
an interview with the Daily Mail, Joseph Hagedon, chief supervising attorney
for the Metropolitan Public Defender’s juvenile unit, said the actions of the
officers, who showed up a week later at the girl’s home, “was way over the
top.”
But
police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson told the Daily Mail that Portland officers
use handcuffs as a safeguard, and the two officers were following proper
procedure.
The
now-10-year-old girl was traumatized by the incident and had to change schools
because of teasing. She has been in counseling since last June.
The
girl’s mother last month went to the Citizen Review Committee, an advisory and
monitoring panel that hears complaints of alleged officer misconduct against
Portland police. The committee agreed to hear her testimony and it was first
reported in the weekly Portland Mercury. Harris said she is planning to sue the
department.
Critics
of the department are asking for a change in policy to sharply restrict
officers from taking a child younger than 10 years old into custody.
After
she was held in a cell for an hour, the 9-year-old girl was released.
Prosecutors declined to pursue prosecuting the little girl.
The
fight occurred between two girls because one of them tattled on the other in
school for drawing on a desk. After a staff member broke up the fight, Harris’
daughter continued trying to kick and punch her nemesis — though the girls
eventually apologized to one another and the 9-year-old was suspended from the
club for a week.
But
the parents got involved when the mother of one of the girls in the altercation
called police and demanded that Harris’ daughter be arrested for slamming her
child’s head against a wall and leaving a contusion on her face.
Harris
said the experience has changed her little girl, a gifted student.
“I
didn’t get the same girl back,” she said.
