A Maryland County has announced a six-figure settlement with a Black woman who sued the municipality after two officers from its police department violated her son’s civil rights.
On Friday, Aug. 26, the Office of the County Attorney for Montgomery County announced it settled a lawsuit filed by Shanta Grant against the county’s Board of Education and the two cops for $275,000, according to the release and settlement claim for the case.
The claim alleged 20 counts, including assault, battery, false arrest, false imprisonment, and negligence, according to DCist.com.
Court documents state on Jan. 14, 2020, two-tenths of a mile away from the East Silver Spring Elementary School, police officers Dionne Holiday and Kevin Christmon located a 5-year-old Black boy who was reported missing from the school.
During the period between locating the youngster and bringing him back to school, the lawsuit filed by the child’s mother said, her son was verbally abused, threatened, and handcuffed by the cops. All the while, the boy is heard crying and coughing, even telling the officers “I don’t want to go” as they grabbed his small wrist and pulled him to their vehicle.
The abusive comments made to the little boy were captured on the officers’ bodycams released on March 26, 2021, and revealed in court filings.
When he started to handcuff the boy, Christmon said, “These are for people that don’t want to listen and don’t know how to act. If someone tells you to sit down and shut up, any adult, you better sit down and shut up.”
While the shackled boy was crying in the back of the patrol car, Christmon was recorded telling him to “cut that out.”
Holiday is heard teasing the weeping boy, “Does your mama spank you? She’s going to spank you today.”
One of the officers further stated, “this is why people need to beat their kids” and “I hope your mama let me beat you.”
The ordeal lasted over 51 minutes. A little over a year later, the boy’s mother filed a lawsuit against the school district for not properly supervising her son and the officers for their maltreatment of the boy.
The lawsuit stated from the onset of their engagement with Grant’s child, the officers were mean-spirited and even barked in his face with “the seeming purpose of terrorizing an already traumatized and upset child.”
“You can obviously see in the video the distress,” said one of the family’s lawyers James Papirmeister, said, “We weren’t even needing to call the little boy as a witness: You could see him literally choking on his tears and gasping for breath because he was so catatonically traumatized.”
When the County Council saw the video, they released a statement expressing how appalled they were at the negligence of the school and the conduct of the police.
“We are outraged by the conduct that we observed. The full Council offers its deepest apologies to the Grant family,” the joint statement said. “This incident is absolutely unacceptable: No child, not to mention a five-year-old child, should ever be treated this way by the people tasked with keeping our communities safe.”
It continued, “This incident also reflects the need for increased police training on interactions with young children and de-escalating situations … We must do better for our children, our schools, and our community.”
The council called what the officers did to the boy, “child abuse,” condemning it “unequivocally.”
The payments will be distributed to the plaintiff in two checks from the County’s $87M Self-Insurance Fund. On behalf of the two officers Holiday and Christmon, the city will pay $220,000 and has resolved to pay $55,000 on behalf of the Board of Education.
According to the terms of the agreement, the payment will satisfy all claims including “financial losses due to medical expenses, therapy expenses, counseling expenses, future educational expenses, or psychological/ psychiatric expenses incurred by” the child, whose name has been redacted from the document.
Grant, nor her child, will be able to refile the lawsuit or another based on the incident.
Even with the perimeters, the lawyer and family are content with the outcome, saying the money will go to the boy’s education.
Matthew Bennett, the other family lawyer said, “This is life-changing money. It will go into a trust account, and it will earn interest. When the youngster is ready to go to college, he’ll have a large chunk of change to pay for his college.”
In a statement, County Executive Marc Elrich said, “We are pleased to see that the parties involved in this case reached a settlement; I had been pushing for this for quite some time.”
He continued, “This incident has been thoroughly reviewed, including as part of the external audit conducted by Effective Law Enforcement for All (ELE4A), and has led to changes in officer training, incident reporting processes, and clarification of how officers should interact with students in our schools.”
Link to original Atlanta Black Star