A young girl was fingerprinted and had her mugshot taken after allegedly assaulting a school staff employee. 6-year-old Kaia Rolle was having trouble sleeping due to sleep apnea, according to her grandmother, Maralyn Kirkland.
Her grandmother said the child was arrested for battery after throwing a temper tantrum that caused her to kick a school employee.
Kaia attends the Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy, which is a charter school in Orlando, Florida. According to her grandmother, Kaia was having trouble focusing and was acting out due to a lack of sleep. She was taken to the principal’s office for her behavioral issues, where, at one point, a school employee grabbed her wrists.
Kirkland states that Kaia panicked and kicked out with both feet, which resulted in the school employee being struck. Following this, the school’s resource officer,” a police officer named Dennis Turner, handcuffed Kaia and took her to the Juvenile Assessment Center to be charged with battery.
The thought of a 6-year-old child who has trouble sleeping being grabbed on the wrist by an adult and then arrested for battery when they lash out it troubling, to say the least. It is worth noting that Officer Turner did not follow proper protocol when arresting Kaia.
Any arrest of a child under 12 requires the arresting officer to get permission from their watch commander, which Turner failed to do.
When Kirkland, the girl’s grandmother, explained to Turner that the child has sleep apnea and had been sleep deprived, the officer reportedly shrugged it off. Kirkland stated, “He said, ‘Well, I have sleep apnea, and I don’t behave like that,'” indicating a lack of perspective on the part of the officer.
Officer Turner, who also arrested an 8-year-old child in an unrelated incident the same day he arrested Kaia, is now under investigation. In both arrests, Turner failed to receive permission from his watch captain. Due to this lack of protocol, Turner will be investigated by the department in order to ascertain why he’s been arresting children.
