Family Of 8-Year-Old Florida Boy Files Lawsuit Over Arrest

MIAMI, FL — Civil rights attorney Ben Crump filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of the family of an eight-year-old Florida boy with special needs who was placed in handcuffs too large for his small wrists by Key West police, ushered into a jail cell and charged with felony battery after striking a substitute teacher.

"He vividly remembers them slamming the big door with the bars on it," said Crump, who is also representing the family of George Floyd in a civil lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis and the officers accused in Floyd's death.

Crump said he sees parallels to the Florida case, which occurred in December of 2018, more than a year before the Floyd case made national headlines and sparked protests across the United States and throughout the world.

"It wasn’t just the knee of officer Derek Chauvin that killed George Floyd in Minneapolis," Crump said during a virtual news conference. "It was the knee of the entire Minneapolis police department, and the entire system. That’s what we believe is happening here."

The Florida lawsuit named three Key West police officers as defendants, including a school resource officer; the city of Key West; the Monroe County School District; the principal of Gerald Adams Elementary, a teacher at the school and an assistant principal.

The 22-page suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages as well as an "in-person oral apology, and a written admission and apology on the school district and city's official letterhead" plus legal fees.

The child's mother, Bianca N. Digennaro, told reporters she was having a medical procedure at the time of the incident. The boy's father was at the school during the incident but was not with his son at the time. Attorneys for the family said the boy was told his father left when he repeatedly asked to see him.

"I wasn’t there to protect my son from getting arrested, going to an adult jail, being fingerprinted, having his mouth swabbed for DNA," Digennaro said. "My 8-year-old son has a mugshot out there and has DNA out there. He was put in a jail cell. It doesn’t matter for how long — whether it was five minutes or five hours."

According to the lawsuit, the child, who is now 10, was Baker Acted and hospitalized in February of 2018 "after making statements of self-harm." He was diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder and adjustment disorder with mixed disturbance of emotional conduct.

Digennaro said she had to hire a lawyer and pay for a forensic evaluation for her son. She said it took nine months before the state attorney's office agreed to drop the criminal case against the child.

Watch video of the boy being taken into custody here courtesy of Crump's office.

Attorney Devon M. Jacob, who is also working with Crump on the Floyd case, said school officials had a duty to protect the child from the officers.

"It was their duty to intervene to protect this special needs boy from those police officers," Jacob said. "There should have been school officials in handcuffs because they went too far protecting the boy — is what should have happened. But instead, they simply handed him over."

Becky Herrin of the Monroe County School District told Patch the district has no comment on the lawsuit.

"The district has been advised by it's attorneys not to comment on this matter due to ongoing legal proceedings," she said.

Spokeswoman Alyson Crean of the Key West Police Department also declined to comment on the lawsuit.