Honolulu Pays $175,000 To Settle Lawsuit Over Arrest Of A 10-Year-Old Girl

If you put cops in schools, this is what you get:

On the morning of January 10, 2020, a parent complained to school officials about a sketch N.B. and other students had drawn in response to another student bullying N.B. The parent unreasonably insisted that school officials call the police.

After arriving on school grounds, police interrogated 10-year-old N.B., handcuffed her with excessive force, arrested her without probable cause, and transported her to the police station—all without letting N.B. see or speak with her mother. The police and school officials took these traumatizing actions despite the fact that N.B. was cooperative and did not pose any danger to any person or herself—and without accommodating N.B.’s disability, which was documented with the school.

The problem was a drawing another student didn’t like. The bigger problem was the response. Instead of calling in the child’s parent first to discuss a drawing another student felt was insulting and/or threatening, the school decided to involve law enforcement first and consider the consequences of this action later.

Obviously, bullying is a serious problem. But calling the cops over an allegedly “threatening” drawing is ridiculous, especially when the “target” of the drawing had no opinion whatsoever about the picture and that cops were only involved because the parents of another student decided to go full Karen about it.

Even assuming the complaining parent wanted to press charges—and assuming there were valid charges that could be brought against N.B.—N.B. could have easily been surrendered to her mother who was at the school. No one else involved in the drawing incident was arrested or interrogated. No charges were ever brought against N.B., who as a ten year old did not intend to commit a crime with a drawing she did not draw alone and did not even want to deliver. N.B.’s detention and false arrest without probable cause violated her rights to be free from unreasonable seizures under the Hawai‘i and U.S. Constitutions.

Because of this chain of events, the district court had no problem denying immunity to the cops involved in this handcuffing. Neither did the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court when the city of Honolulu decided to press the issue. In its decision, it not only pointed out that the police department felt THREE officers were needed to handle a 10-year-old armed only with crayons, but that a whole bunch of precedent made it clear this use of force — even as limited as it ultimately was — was unconstitutional.

In C.B. v. City of Sonora, we held that the “use of handcuffs on a calm, compliant, but non-responsive 11-year-old child was unreasonable.” We also determined that the “decision to leave [the child] in handcuffs for the duration of [a] half-hour commute to his uncle’s business—a commute that took place in a vehicle equipped with safety locks that made escape impossible—was clearly unreasonable.” Following Sonora, no reasonable official could have believed that the level of force employed against ten-year-old N.B. as alleged in Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint—namely, placing her in adult handcuffs to transport her to the police station—was necessary. Like the eleven-year-old child in Sonora, N.B. was calm and compliant, was questioned in a secluded office surrounded by adults, and did not resist arrest or attempt to flee.

Thanks to two consecutive shutdowns by federal judges, the city of Honolulu has wisely decided to cut a check, rather than let a jury tell it to cut a presumably much larger check. Here’s the latest from Courthouse News Service:

Honolulu settled a civil rights lawsuit brought by the mother of a Black girl who was a 10-year-old elementary school student when police arrested her because of a drawing she made that was deemed threatening to another student.

[…]

The total settlement amount is $175,000, including $150,000 from the city and $25,000 from the Hawaii Department of Education, said Mateo Caballero, an attorney representing the mother. 

That’s a bargain. And it’s the sort of bargain only an impending loser can strike. Even if this seems a bit small-ball when compared to the LITERAL ARREST AND HANDCUFFING OF A STUDENT THAT DREW A PICTURE THE PERSON IT SHOULD HAVE OFFENDED WASN’T ACTUALLY OFFENDED BY, the bigger, better part of this is that this state-enabled BS won’t be following the student around for the rest of her (minor) life:

The arrest record of the child will be expunged as part of the settlement, the attorney said.

Good. That’s the least the city could do. I mean, on top of the settlement, which still seems pretty low but will have to do until the city’s cops violate more rights in a more unforgivable fashion.

Look, I understand not all disciplinary problems can be handled by school staff. Actual violence involving actual weapons actually happens in schools. But when the dispute is over a drawing, the best way to take this on is to involve parents, students, and administrators. There’s no reason to call dispatch to see how many bored, under-utilized officers it might be able to spare. Cops only understand immediate compliance and the tactics they can use to ensure this. That’s how 10-year-olds end up shackled in adult handcuffs. And that’s how taxpayers get shit on for having the misfortune of living in a city where cops can’t control themselves when faced with “perps” less than half their height and more than half their age.