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Bluelight Crew
A punch that a Pembroke Pines police officer threw at a mentally ill 14-year-old girl in state custody has sparked an investigation of conditions at a local youth psychiatric facility.
During the April 28 incident, partially caught on surveillance video, a police officer punched the girl in the face — after the girl appeared to swing at the officer. Then, another officer pepper sprayed the girl and a third sat on top of her while she had an asthma attack, according to Broward Assistant Public Defender Gordon H. Weekes Jr.
Officers used appropriate force and were responding to a riot at the state-licensed Citrus Center for Adolescent Treatment Service, said Pembroke Pines Police Captain Al Xiques.
The girl was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest with violence, and criminal mischief, Weekes said. Six other juvenile residents of the facility were also arrested and face charges that include battery on a law enforcement officer, aiding and abetting a riot and enticing and affray, according to police.
Weekes, who is defending the 14-year-old, argues officers used excessive force that exacerbated the teenager’s mental illness and revived the trauma of past abuse.
While investigating her case, Weekes said he found a broader pattern of disturbing conditions at the facility, a locked residence for youth with serious emotional and mental disorders. In a letter he sent to interim secretary Esther Jacobo at the state Department of Children & Families on Monday, Weekes alleged that staff excessively used physical and chemical restraints to subdue detained girls, even for minor infractions.
On an almost daily basis, staff tied girls’ arms and legs to a cot in an isolated room and injected them with a chemical substance that left them unconscious for hours, Weekes said. They awoke groggy and unable to recall what happened after they were subdued, he said. Sometimes these restraints were applied for speaking too loudly, getting out of a chair too quickly or being confrontational, he said.
“The practice of subduing minor girls with chemical restraints is so common and pervasive that the patients in the facility have dubbed it the ‘booty-juice.’ This mental health facility is simply tying-down and knocking-out little girls who behave in accordance with their mental illness,” Weekes wrote in the letter.
“Most troubling and abhorrent, is the fact that the repeated use of restraining sedation has exacerbated the occurrence of disruptive behavior because it is believed that several girls intentionally engage in misbehavior in order to receive the chemical sedative ‘booty-juice’ so they can get high,” Weekes wrote.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/08/3551395/police-punch-leads-to-probe-of.html#storylink=cpy
During the April 28 incident, partially caught on surveillance video, a police officer punched the girl in the face — after the girl appeared to swing at the officer. Then, another officer pepper sprayed the girl and a third sat on top of her while she had an asthma attack, according to Broward Assistant Public Defender Gordon H. Weekes Jr.
Officers used appropriate force and were responding to a riot at the state-licensed Citrus Center for Adolescent Treatment Service, said Pembroke Pines Police Captain Al Xiques.
The girl was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest with violence, and criminal mischief, Weekes said. Six other juvenile residents of the facility were also arrested and face charges that include battery on a law enforcement officer, aiding and abetting a riot and enticing and affray, according to police.
Weekes, who is defending the 14-year-old, argues officers used excessive force that exacerbated the teenager’s mental illness and revived the trauma of past abuse.
While investigating her case, Weekes said he found a broader pattern of disturbing conditions at the facility, a locked residence for youth with serious emotional and mental disorders. In a letter he sent to interim secretary Esther Jacobo at the state Department of Children & Families on Monday, Weekes alleged that staff excessively used physical and chemical restraints to subdue detained girls, even for minor infractions.
On an almost daily basis, staff tied girls’ arms and legs to a cot in an isolated room and injected them with a chemical substance that left them unconscious for hours, Weekes said. They awoke groggy and unable to recall what happened after they were subdued, he said. Sometimes these restraints were applied for speaking too loudly, getting out of a chair too quickly or being confrontational, he said.
“The practice of subduing minor girls with chemical restraints is so common and pervasive that the patients in the facility have dubbed it the ‘booty-juice.’ This mental health facility is simply tying-down and knocking-out little girls who behave in accordance with their mental illness,” Weekes wrote in the letter.
“Most troubling and abhorrent, is the fact that the repeated use of restraining sedation has exacerbated the occurrence of disruptive behavior because it is believed that several girls intentionally engage in misbehavior in order to receive the chemical sedative ‘booty-juice’ so they can get high,” Weekes wrote.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/08/3551395/police-punch-leads-to-probe-of.html#storylink=cpy
