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Camp Rules Allowed Force
In 2004, state officials promised to use less force
at juvenile facilities. But those rules never applied to Florida's boot
camps.
By ALEX LEARY and CURTIS KRUEGER
Published February 25, 2006
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TALLAHASSEE - A month into his job, Anthony
Schembri already was making a splash.
The new head of Florida's juvenile justice agency
ceremoniously declared the end of aggressive force toward children in
state facilities.
"You can't teach compassion by modeling
callousness, and you can't teach respect for the law if you are showing
disrespect," Schembri said in the summer of 2004.
Unnoticed, however, was that Schembri's reforms did
not apply to workers at juvenile boot camps.
Now, with the camps thrust into the spotlight, some
question if the exemption cost a 14-year-old boy his life.
"When you have a policy to protect kids it has to
go across the board," said Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, who has
become a leading boot camp critic since last month's death of Martin Lee
Anderson in a Panama City, Fla., boot camp.
The death came after Anderson was pushed, punched
and kneed by a half-dozen drill instructors and is the subject of a
criminal investigation. It has also triggered policy changes that could
ban the use of force at boot camps.
Critics say that means juvenile justice officials
are now doing what Schembri did not do two years ago.
"What do you say to (Martin's) mother? Now we
understand it wasn't a good idea not to apply that policy to everyone?"
Barreiro said. "Sorry doesn't cut it. He'll never come home."
Schembri, the brash-talking New Yorker who was the
model for the TV show The Commish, declined to be interviewed for this
story.
A spokeswoman said Friday that he did not include
boot camps in the Youth Rights Policy because boot camps have a
different philosophy toward rehabilitation than other juvenile programs.
"It's not like one size fits all," Cynthia Lorenzo
said. Schembri, she said, knew local sheriffs operated the boot camps
and their staff had "superior training" to that of other juvenile
justice personnel.
But that training provides greater latitude for the
type of tactics used on Martin Anderson.
"They've created a culture that is susceptible to
abuse," said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, a former federal
prosecutor.
Gelber said that even within the boot camps there
are different standards of force. "With what we have now, I'm not sure
what the limits are," he said.
* * *
Critics say the differing standards reflect the
clout of Florida's sheriffs.
"Schembri doesn't want to offend the good old boy
network, the guys that believe that bashing a kid's face into a wall
works. Sheriffs have huge leverage," said Clearwater activist Cathy
Corry.
"The sad reality is the multitude of kids who are
abused or neglected and the public doesn't know about it because they
didn't die," said Corry, who runs www.justice4kids.org. a Web site
critical of the Juvenile Justice Department.
Lorenzo could not say Friday whether Schembri spoke
to sheriffs about the policy change in 2004.
Whatever the case, he was not breaking tradition.
Sheriff's offices have been permitted more leeway since youth boot camps
began in Florida in 1993.
Manatee County Sheriff Charlie Wells, who opened
the first boot camp, said the in-your-face tactics were seen as
integral.
"It's a control factor ... The boot camp would fall
flat on its face without that initial intake," he said.
Wells pointed out that Democratic Gov. Lawton
Chiles and fellow Democrats controlled state government at the time and
the concept was "unilaterally accepted."
The Department of Juvenile Justice did not exist
then; the former Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative
Services oversaw boot camps. The thinking at the time was sheriffs'
employees were already subject to extensive training and did not need
what HRS could offer, Lorenzo and others said.
Those regulations come under the state's Criminal
Justice Standards and Training Commission, a longstanding panel that
governs law enforcement.
Most boot camp employees are trained under the
defensive tactics component, which in 624 pages spells out how to take
down subjects and apply some of the very moves - hammerlocks,
shoulderlocks and pressure points - barred in other juvenile facilities.
Those facilities, which include wilderness camps and standard juvenile
detention facilities, follow the more restrictive Protective Action
Response policy.
"Too many youth have been injured in incidents with
these techniques," Schembri said in 2004. "While these holds may be
appropriate for an adult population, experience has shown us that it is
too easy to injure a young person when applying these holds. Physical
restraint should be applied only to prevent a youth from hurting himself
or others."
His memo disclosing those reforms did not mention
that boot camps were not affected.
* * *
The omission potentially affected scores of youths,
including Sean Matthew Lewen of Pinellas Park, who went through the Bay
County boot camp last year.
Lewen said he was sent to the camp after he faced
charges of battery, burglary and violation of probation.
The 18-year-old told the St. Petersburg Times a
drill instructor held down his thumb and pushed on a pressure point -
the underside of his wrist. "It hurt," he said. "It made me shut up."
Although staff members at boot camps, jails and
other institutions generally are trained in ways to restrain unruly
inmates, Lewen said drill instructors in Bay County used some of these
methods make inmates comply.
"If they saw we were doing anything wrong, that's
when they hurt us," Lewen said.
One day, he said, he was sitting in the boot camp
classroom when a drill instructor told him to put his things under his
desk.
When he said he already had, the drill instructor
pulled him out of his chair and called in on his radio a "signal 93" for
"insolence," Lewen said. That brought another drill instructor into the
classroom.
Lewen said he was squirming as the drill instructor
pulled his hands behind his back, and "that's when he started to pull my
thumb back and pressure point me."
Lewen said the drill instructors took him outside
to a dirt field and had him do a "low crawl" through the dirt. He said
he also was told to do sprints across the field and that he was given a
dustpan and told to "paint the dirt," by smoothing it all out. He said
he was then told to fill two buckets with dirt and sprint across the
field carrying them.
Lewen said he saw drill instructors using the wrist
pressure point technique on youths about a dozen times during his six
months in the boot camp.
"That's what they call pain compliance," Lewen
said.
Lorenzo, the juvenile justice spokeswoman, said
state confidentially rules did not allow her to confirm if Lewen was an
inmate at a state boot camp. However, she said: "Any allegation of abuse
is taken very seriously by our agency. They are throughly investigated,
and if substantiated further action is taken to the full extent."
Lewen said he received a high school diploma in
boot camp. But half a year later, he said he is still angry about the
experience.
"It filled my heart with hate, that's it," he said.
* * *
Chris Caballero, second in command at the
Department of Juvenile Justice, said it is too early to tell if the Bay
County boot camp guards exceeded the more lenient standards in the
Anderson case.
But juvenile justice officials already have taken
steps to create a more uniform policy. A tentative list of changes that
surfaced this week bar use of pain compliance at boot camps.
Some could see that as an acknowledgement that past
practices fell short of the principles Schembri extolled two years ago.
"Hindsight is always 20/20," Caballero said. "It's
like when an accident happens at an intersection without a red light.
The first thing everybody usually does is call for a red light."
[Last modified February 25, 2006, 01:37:13]
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