A 15-year-old girl on a field trip to a Detroit courtroom ended up in handcuffs and jail clothes after falling asleep in court and angering the judge with her “attitude.” Judge Kenneth King even threatened to send the teenager to juvenile detention.
King has since defended his actions despite pushback from the charity that organized the field trip and the girl’s mother, who said her daughter was tired that day because the family doesn’t have a permanent residence.
The field trip took place on Tuesday and was organized by The Greening of Detroit, an environmental non-profit that works with youth. During the visit to the 36th District Court, the 15-year-old girl reportedly fell asleep twice.
Video footage from within the courtroom was obtained by local broadcasters, including WXYZ-TV and Fox2, showing King calling the teenager out for falling asleep.
“You fall asleep in my courtroom one more time, I’m gonna put you in back, understood?” King said.
The girl’s response was not audible in the footage but King said moments later, “You don’t care?”
He then had the girl change into jail clothes and she was brought back into the courtroom with handcuffs on.
Instead of rejoining the rest of the field trip group, the girl was made to stand at what appeared to be a desk and lectern for court defendants, behind a clear plexiglass screen. The judge continued to question her.
“Why are you being disrespectful to this court?” King asked. “You sleep at home, in your bed – not in court. And quite frankly, I don’t like your attitude.”
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Later on, King asked the girl, “What is your problem?” She replied, “I apologize, I’m just tired.”
King also threatened to throw the girl into juvenile detention, asking the teen, “You do understand we have a jail for kids?”
“I’m going to go to sleep tonight while you’re sitting in a juvenile detention centre,” he added.
The girl’s mother told WXYZ that her daughter was tired that day because the family doesn’t have stable housing and is struggling to make ends meet. Latoreya Till took particular issue with the judge telling her daughter that she should “sleep at home, in (her) bed.”
“How do you know my baby got a home? How do you know my baby got a bed?” Till asked with tears running down her face. “She don’t have that right now, so she was tired.”
The Greening of Detroit, which organized the field trip, said the girl “was traumatized by the judge’s unnecessary disciplinary treatment and scolding.”
“Although the judge was trying to teach a lesson of respect, his methods were unacceptable. The group of students should have been simply asked to leave the courtroom if he thought they were disrespectful,” chairperson Marissa Ebersole Wood said.
King defended his actions in an interview with WXYZ, saying he wanted to scare the girl “straight.”
“I’ll do whatever needs to be done to reach these kids and make sure that they don’t end up in front of me,” King told the outlet, adding that he didn’t think his actions were “heavy handed.”
“I wanted this to look and feel very real to her, even though there’s probably no real chance of me putting her in jail. That was my own version of ‘Scared Straight,’” he added, referring to a documentary about teen offenders who met with adult convicts in an effort to dissuade them from a life of crime.
The judge claims he wouldn’t have actually sent the teen to juvie for what she did, but maintains that he could have if he wanted to.
“Was I really going to do that? Probably not. Could I have? Probably so. But that’s not what I want to do to a kid who’s there on a field trip,” he said to WXYZ.
King said he reached out to the family to offer to mentor the girl but the family says they’re not interested.
Judge Aliyah Sabree, who has the No. 2 leadership post at the court, released a statement Wednesday night, saying King’s conduct “does not reflect the standards we uphold at 36th District Court.”
“I am committed to addressing this matter with the utmost diligence,” Sabree said.
— with files from The Associated Press
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