8-year old's autism caused him to act out. SR deputy handcuffed him, Baker Acted him.

A family has filed a lawsuit against the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office accusing a former school resource officer of unlawfully "manhandling, handcuffing, and Baker Acting an 8-year-old disabled boy."

The complaint, filed Feb. 13 in the U.S. District Court in Pensacola, names the Sheriff's Office, Sheriff Bob Johnson, former school resource officer David Daniels, the Santa Rosa County School Board and the High Road School of Santa Rosa as defendants.

The lawsuit centers around a December 2021 encounter between Daniels and a child identified in the complaint as "Little B," a boy diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to the complaint.

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The 8-year-old's family says he experienced "pain, fear and emotional trauma, and an exacerbation of (his) disabilities" as a result of the experience. They also claim there were multiple violations of they and their son's constitutional rights.

Both the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's and a School District spokesperson declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

What led to the handcuffing incident?

According to a civil complaint filed on the family's behalf by attorneys Jeremiah Talbott and Brian H. Pollock, the incident occurred Dec. 8, 2021.

According to the complaint, the boy began exhibiting "aggressive behavior" related to his autism, and school staff contacted the school resource officer, Daniels, to respond.

The complaint claims Daniels forcibly and wrongfully handcuffed Little B, "paraded" him through the school and into a law enforcement vehicle and transported him to HCA Florida West Hospital to be evaluated under the Baker Act.

Some of the encounter was captured on Daniels' body-worn camera.

Footage shows Daniels' responding to a "Serenity Room" where Little B had been placed by school staff after he reportedly hit several people.

"This is the third time I've got called back here for you hitting," Daniels can be heard saying on the recording.

A few minutes into the response, Daniels turns off his camera. The camera is reactivated about 50 minutes later, according to a timestamp in the video. Little B is in a hallway outside the serenity room, and Daniels can be seen pulling the boy's arms behind his back and putting him in handcuffs as Little B yells, sobs and tries to pull away.

Daniels leaves the boy with school staff and pulls his law enforcement vehicle around to a rear door near the serenity room. After asking a staff member to clear a group of students away from the area, he goes back inside the hallway and finds Little B has slipped out of the handcuffs.

As staff tries to calm Little B, Daniels handcuffs him again as the boy struggles, cries and screams repeatedly, "Don't do it! Don't do it!"

Daniels ultimately cuffs the boy's hands behind his back again, walks him a short distance out a hallway exit door and into the backseat of his patrol vehicle as Little B continuously cries and begs for "another chance."

Staff can be heard on the footage discussing Little B's past behavior, noting that he had previously been suspended for hitting people and that the behavior wouldn't be excused as he got older.

"He needs to know there's consequences," Daniels noted.

While in the backseat of the cruiser, Little B escapes the cuffs a second time, and Daniels puts them on again and straps Little B in his seatbelt. He then waits for another deputy to arrive to take custody of LITTLE B and transport him to the hospital for evaluation.

When the second deputy arrives, he asks Daniels to explain the situation.

"He continuously hits and bites staff, I mean to the point where they have bruises the size of baseballs," Daniels said. "And they suspended him for it, but today he was just nonstop hitting and so I was back there with him for 30 minutes ... he's walking up, acting like he's going to punch me and I'm like, (Little B), you do it and you're going in handcuffs."

Daniels said while they were talking in the serenity room, a member of staff walked up to Little B and he began punching her in the stomach. Because Daniels turned his camera off, it is unknown what happened.

"I'm like, enough. Enough. I mean it's ongoing. So today's the day. We can't keep doing this."

During the incident, Daniels threatens to "call mom and dad," but the complaint states Little B's parents were not contacted "during the incident, prior to handcuffing Little B, or while Little B was restrained in the police car waiting."

Video shows Little B is ultimately transferred to the other deputy's car and transported to the hospital for evaluation. Body camera footage indicates it is about two hours from the time Daniels responds to the serenity room to the time Little B arrives at the hospital.

Lawsuit alleges Sheriff's Office and school system overuse the Baker Act

Attorneys for Little B's family raised a number of concerns with the defendants' handling of the issue, among them claims that the Sheriff's Office and School Board "failed to take action to prevent illegal and inappropriate use of the Baker Act against children."

The Florida Mental Health Act, commonly referred to as the Baker Act, focuses on crisis services for individuals with mental illness who are experiencing a medical emergency. An individual may be taken in for involuntary examination under the Baker Act if it seems the individual may pose a serious threat to themselves or others without intervention.

"On no occasion was there any imminent danger of serious physical harm to the child or anyone else that required the child to be restrained and handcuffed," the complaint said.

The complaint alleges that although school staff told Daniels they did not want to press charges, "Daniels decided that he was going to teach Little B a lesson and handcuff him and Baker Acted him."

The complaint asserts, "Often, law enforcement officers use the Baker Act statute to manage behavioral issues they are not trained to recognize, deescalate, or properly address. ... Despite being aware of its inappropriate overuse of the Baker Act for years, (Sheriff Bob Johnson and his department) have done little to eliminate unnecessary Baker Act use or properly train its personnel or contractors on alternatives.

"Their published Baker Act policy, as well as their meager training materials, are full of omissions and inaccuracies about the statute’s requirements and provide little guidance about when initiating an involuntary examination of a child would be appropriate. They also do little or nothing to explain to staff that using the Baker Act in non-emergency situations is far more likely to traumatize children than to help them."

According to the complaint, when the child was taken to a medical doctor at the hospital for evaluation, the doctor determined the boy was not a threat and that it was unnecessary to Baker Act him.

"The physician at (the hospital) who evaluated Little B gave the professional opinion that Little B should never have been Baker Acted and attempted to contact Officer Daniels to discuss the inappropriateness of Daniels’ actions, but Daniels was recalcitrant towards the doctor," the complaint states. "The physician at WFH even tried to contact Daniels’ supervisor, who similarly was nonresponsive and not helpful."

What does the family want?

The family is seeking permanent injunctive relief to prohibit the defendants from authorizing or employing "the unnecessary and excessive use of physical restraint and handcuffing on school children."

They are also seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages and reasonable attorney's fees.

The complaint says that Little B and his family have suffered greatly from the trauma of the incident, and that he has become more aggressive and gets upset more easily.

"He has become scared to attend school and his parents have had to home school Little B," the complaint says.

The suit alleges the defendants individually and collectively violated the due process and constitutional rights of Little B and his family on multiple fronts, among them Fourth and 14th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, prohibitions against excessive force, multiple sections of the Americans with Disabilities Act and deprivation of parental right to custody and control.

Complaint claims Daniels' school resource officer assignment was a "punishment" for a previous transgression

Some of the concerns raised by the family focused on Daniels' disciplinary history and training.

The complaints states that in May 2021, Daniels was assigned to patrol duties. After he arrived at work smelling of alcohol, a breath sample confirmed he had alcohol in his system and he was ultimately suspended for 10 days.

When he returned from suspension, he was reclassified as a school resource officer. "This position was a punishment for Daniels," the complaint claims.

The document alleges Daniels was not given sufficient training for the new position.

"Although Defendant Daniels had completed many of the training protocols, his training was very limited with regard to mental health, Baker Act etc.," the complaint said. It said Daniels completed an SRSO autism training in 2019, 2020 and 2021 respectively, but each of the trainings was just four minutes.

The complaint also said Daniels allegedly did not complete Crisis Intervention Team training and finished Criminal Justice Standards & Training Commission School Resource Officer training after the incident with Little B.

The complaint also claimed Daniels' SRSO career had been on a "downward trajectory" since he joined the agency in 2016.

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Daniels was terminated from the Sheriff's Office in January of this year after being arrested for an unrelated 2016 incident in which he is accused of touching an 11-year-old girl inappropriately. That incident did not occur in a school setting.

"Due to the nature of the claim and Daniels' position as a school resource officer at High Road School of Santa Rosa, he was immediately removed from his position at the school and replaced with another deputy," the SRSO wrote at the time.

As of Thursday, none of the defendants have filed responses to the lawsuit, and no hearing dates had been set.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Santa Rosa child with autism illegally Baker Acted, SRSO lawsuit says