Reps for 10-year-old perp-walked by Lee sheriff call for DOJ investigation

An advocacy group representing Daniel Marquez, the 10-year-old Cape Coral boy arrested in May for allegedly making a school threat, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Lee County Sheriff's Office's handling of the case.

Letitia Kim, the managing director of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism's legal network, accused Sheriff Carmine Marceno of violating Daniel's constitutional rights and publishing edited text messages to falsely portray Daniel as guilty.

"We urge the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the wrongful arrest and gross mistreatment of Daniel Marquez by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office," Kim wrote in the July 14 letter. "Unless action is taken, Sheriff Marceno will feel free to continue to abuse his position and power at the expense of innocent children."

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On June 10, Marceno's office posted a video on TikTok including images of the alleged threatening texts, which FAIR said was set to AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill."

The TikTok appears to show two screenshots of the texts stacked on top of one another, which Kim alleges was an attempt to falsely connect a text about "water day" — an upcoming school event — to an image of rifles.

"That video purports to show Daniel’s texts, but in fact, the images are misleading fabrications created by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office," Kim wrote in the letter. "They make it appear, falsely, that Daniel’s 'water day' text was a caption for a rifle image and that Daniel sent the water day text twice."

Marceno's office did not respond to a question about the text screenshots but issued a statement defending the sheriff's approach to school safety.

"As the sheriff of Lee County, school safety is my top priority," Marceno said in the statement. "Our youth services deputies and detectives do an amazing job to ensure the safety of our students and school staff. Any threats made, real or fake, will be immediately investigated and taken seriously.”

In a June interview with WINK, Marceno acknowledged that the screenshots posted on TikTok differed from the original texts.

“This is the actual one, which is guns, ‘get ready for water day.’ So, it might be double in this image. Because it was edited," Marceno told the news station.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An arrest and a perp walk

Daniel is accused of making the threats in a series of texts to a friend the Friday before Memorial Day. He pleaded not guilty earlier this month to a count of making a written threat to commit a mass shooting.

One text said “I scammed my friend” for $1 trillion, with an image of money captured from Google, according to a deputy’s report and images of the texts released by the sheriff’s office. Then “I bought this,” with another Google image of AR-style rifles. And then the phrase “get ready for water day” — an end-of-school event for students.

Daniel's father, Dereck Marquez, maintains that his son is innocent, saying the texts about money and guns were a bad joke about scamming a friend out of money and were not a threat. The water day text was an unrelated reference to an event that Daniel was excited to attend, Marquez said.

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Three hours after Daniel’s arrest, the sheriff’s department released a 22-second video of a deputy walking the handcuffed 10-year-old to a cruiser. Daniel’s face is visible, and his name and date of birth are included in the accompanying Facebook post. Since the video was posted on May 28, it has accrued more than 470,000 views.

Marceno then did a string of interviews with local, national and international news media, touting his commitment to zero-tolerance law enforcement in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre.

The day after Daniel's arrest, a judge ordered him held in secure detention for 21 days, the maximum allowed for juveniles under Florida law. He was released nine days early after he became sick and the facility did not provide a rapid COVID-19 test as requested by the judge, said Marquez's attorney.

In an interview with this news organization, Marceno defended his decision to publicize Daniel's identity, saying he received support from parents who had used the incident to scare their own kids straight.

“We’re going to handcuff them, we’re going to post their picture and there’s going to be a perp walk,” Marceno told The News-Press / Naples Daily News. “I don’t care who it is, I don’t care what age it is.”

Three juvenile justice and school violence experts interviewed by this news organization said they had never heard of a 10-year-old defendant being so-called "perp-walked."

Marceno has publicized juvenile arrests before, including walking two middle schoolers out in front of television cameras last fall after they were arrested for allegedly planning a Columbine-style attack. They were charged with felonies, and the court case is ongoing. In another incident, the sheriff’s office released footage of three 11-year-olds being marched in handcuffs after they allegedly threatened to set a fire at their Fort Myers school.

Criminal justice investigative reporter Dan Glaun can be reached at daniel.glaun@naplesnews.com or on Twitter @dglaun.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Reps for Cape Coral boy Daniel Marquez request DOJ investigation, say Lee sheriff edited texts