What Happens if You Try to Open a File for Reading That Doesnã¢â‚¬â„¢t Exist?
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Affiliate i: "What in the World?"
Friday, April 15, 2016: Hobgood Uncomplicated School, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
3 police force officers were crowded into the assistant principal'south office at Hobgood Elementary Schoolhouse, and Tammy Garrett, the schoolhouse's master, had no idea what to exercise. I officer, wearing a tactical belong, was telling her: Get get the kids. A second officer was telling her: Don't go get the kids. The third officeholder wasn't maxim anything.
Garrett knew the police force had been sent to arrest some children, although exactly which children, it would turn out, was unclear to anybody, fifty-fifty to these officers. The names police had given the principal included iv girls, now sitting in classrooms throughout the school. All four girls were Black. In that location was a 6th grader, two 4th graders and a third grader. The youngest was 8. On this sunny Friday afternoon in jump, she wore her hair in pigtails.
A few weeks before, a video had appeared on YouTube. It showed two pocket-sized boys, 5 and vi years former, throwing feeble punches at a larger boy as he walked abroad, while other kids tagged along, some yelling. The scuffle took identify off schoolhouse grounds, after a game of pickup basketball. One kid insulted another kid's mother, is what started it all.
The police were at Hobgood considering of that video. But they hadn't come for the boys who threw punches. They were hither for the children who looked on. The police in Murfreesboro, a fast-growing city nearly 30 miles southeast of Nashville, had secured juvenile petitions for 10 children in all who were accused of failing to stop the fight. Officers were now rounding up kids, fifty-fifty though the department couldn't identify a single one in the video, which was posted with a filter that made faces fuzzy. What was clear were the voices, including that of one daughter trying to break up the fight, saying: "Stop, Tay-Tay. End, Tay-Tay. Finish, Tay-Tay." She was a quaternary grader at Hobgood. Her initials were E.J.
The confusion at Hobgood — ane officer proverb this, another maxim that — could exist traced in role to absenteeism. A police force officer regularly assigned to Hobgood, who knew the students and staff, had bailed that morn after learning about the planned arrests. The idea of arresting these children caused him such stress that he feared he might weep in front of them. Or accept a heart assail. He wanted nothing to do with information technology, so he complained of chest pains and went home, with no alarm to his make full-in about what was in shop.
Also absent-minded was the police force officer who had investigated the video and instigated these arrests, Chrystal Templeton. She had assured the primary she would be in that location. She had also told Garrett in that location would be no handcuffs, that police would be unimposing. But Templeton was a no-evidence. Garrett even texted her — "How's timing?" — but got no respond.
Instead of going to Hobgood, Templeton had spent the afternoon gathering the petitions, and so heading to the Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Center, a two-tiered jail for children with dozens of surveillance cameras, 48 cells and 64 beds. In that location, she waited for the kids to be brought to her.
In Rutherford Canton, a juvenile court judge had been directing police force on what she called "our process" for arresting children, and she appointed the jailer, who employed a "filter system" to determine which children to hold.
The judge was proud of what she had helped build, despite some alarming numbers buried in country reports.
Among cases referred to juvenile courtroom, the statewide boilerplate for how ofttimes children were locked up was 5%.
In Rutherford County, it was 48%.
Rutherford County Locked Up Kids in Almost Half of Cases
Tennessee used to publish statistical reports on juvenile courts statewide. For the last year available, 2014, we compiled reports for all 98 courts. Rutherford County locked upwards kids in 48% of its cases, eclipsing every other jurisdiction. (The graphic below shows the top l courts.) The country stopped publishing this information fifty-fifty every bit it figured prominently in a lawsuit against Rutherford County.
In the assistant master's office at Hobgood, the officer telling Garrett non to go the kids was Chris Williams. Williams, who is Blackness, had been a Murfreesboro cop for v years. "What in the earth?" he idea, when he learned what these arrests were about. At Hobgood, two-thirds of the students were Black or Latino. Williams wondered if such arrests would be made at a school that was mostly white. He had a daughter who was 9. He pictured her existence arrested. This is going to accident upwardly, he idea; I'm going to end upward in federal courtroom over this. He considered quitting, simply instead tried to become someone to intervene. Tucked in an part corner, he called a sergeant, a lieutenant and a major, but couldn't find anyone to telephone call information technology off.
The officer not saying annihilation was Albert Miles III. Growing upward, Miles, who is Black, had friends who hated the law. But Miles' dad was a cop. Miles wanted to prove that constabulary could be trusted. That afternoon, Miles had been pulled out of roll call along with another officer; a sergeant told the two to get arrest some kids at Hobgood. The sergeant didn't say why, only at Hobgood, Miles started picking up details. Miles, as well, wondered if these arrests would happen at a schoolhouse full of white students.
The third officer at Hobgood was Jeff Carroll. He'd been pulled out of roll phone call with Miles. Carroll, who is white, was a patrol officer and SWAT team fellow member. In evaluations, supervisors praised him as a leader, "cool under pressure." Carroll also had no idea what these arrests were about. But his sergeant had ordered them, and he followed orders. Carroll was the officer telling the main: Go go the kids.
Garrett asked if she could telephone call their parents first. Carroll told her no. Garrett told the police that ane girl had diabetes and got treatment when she arrived home after school. Please, the principal said. Permit me telephone call her parent. On this, the police ultimately compromised, saying the daughter could get a shot in the nurse'south office before beingness taken to the jail.
Of the two officers telling Garrett what to exercise — get the kids, don't get the kids — Carroll seemed the more than ambitious, the principal would say later. She agreed to become the kids.
Having these arrests have place at Hobgood was not something school officials wanted. They wanted kids to experience safe at school. Garrett grew upward poor. Nine-tenths of her students were poor. Years earlier, Hobgood had struggled academically. Now it was a historic success. Garrett and her staff had worked to build trust with parents, with students. "I don't give up on kids," Garrett says. But she knew that trust is frail, and trauma endures.
Equally Garrett gathered the girls from their classrooms, she believed the police would at least avoid a spectacle. Schoolhouse let out at 2:30. That was minutes away. Garrett's understanding was that the police force would keep the girls in the function until schoolhouse was dismissed and anybody else was gone.
Garrett rounded upwardly the sixth grader, a alpine girl with braids who had visions of becoming a police force officer; i of the fourth graders, the girl with diabetes; and the 8-year-old tertiary grader. In the hallway, the primary tried to prepare them, maxim the police were in that location regarding a video of a fight. Hearing this, the sixth grader told Garrett that the two other girls hadn't fifty-fifty been at that place.
Afterward returning to the role with the three girls, Garrett relayed to police what the sixth grader had told her.
Her words were barely out when Carroll made information technology articulate he'd had enough, Garrett said later when interviewed as part of an internal law investigation.
Carroll pulled out handcuffs and put them "right in my face," Garrett recalled.
"And he said, 'Nosotros're going now, we're going at present, in that location'south no more talk, and nosotros're going now.'
"And I said, 'But, but, merely.'"
Carroll yelled at her, Garrett said. She felt intimidated. Bullied. She worried that if she said any more, she might exist arrested herself. "And so I backed off."
Past now the girls were crying and screaming and reaching for the chief, who was also crying, as was the banana main. "And information technology was, it was, it was awful," Garrett later said.
Carroll handcuffed the 6th grader. After, asked why, he said considering policy allowed him to. Afterward beingness handcuffed, the sixth grader brutal to her knees.
Miles handcuffed the 8-year-sometime with pigtails. "Just acting out of addiction," he said subsequently. Walking to a patrol car, Miles stopped and thought, "Wait a infinitesimal," and removed the cuffs. "I judge my brain finally caught up with what was going on."
While Carroll drove those two girls to the jail, the fourth grader with diabetes stayed backside to run across the nurse. She was sisters with the sixth grader; her initials were C.C.
In all this back and forth, Primary Garrett realized something. The other 4th grader. She had forgotten about her. And now, school was out. The daughter had boarded her omnibus, and was waiting to go domicile.
The other fourth grader was E.J. Although she'd said "stop," she was on the police'southward list to be picked up for encouraging the fight.
Go get her, the police told Garrett.
Garrett was even so crying. She didn't desire to go out to the line of buses and let all those kids see her like that. Merely she went, feeling she had piffling choice.
A teacher beckoned E.J. off the charabanc. Then Garrett escorted her within, to the awaiting law. E.J., scared and confused, begged for her mother — and threw upward on the floor.
The ii fourth graders still at Hobgood, E.J. and C.C., were best friends. Williams and Miles walked the girls outside, not handcuffing either. With some parents joining in, the officers formed a prayer circumvolve effectually the two girls. Miles prayed out loud for the kids to exist protected and for God to bring peace and understanding. Then he buckled the quaternary graders into a patrol car and drove off. On the way to jail the girls cried, "snot and all," Eastward.J. would say later. Garrett, meanwhile, pulled out her personal cellphone and began calling parents, no longer willing to exercise equally the law commanded.
For the officers, the confusion didn't finish at the schoolhouse. It connected in one case the children began arriving at the jail.
When Carroll walked in with the first ii girls, Templeton, the investigating officer, pointed to the eight-year-former and asked what she was doing at that place. The police had no petition for her, Templeton said. The 8-yr-old's mother presently arrived and took her child home.
Miles brought in the concluding two girls, the ii fourth graders. Then, walking out to his patrol auto, he ran into an angry parent, Miles would retrieve later. It was a begetter demanding answers. Miles dropped his caput, shaking it. The father asked why this was happening. I don't know, Miles answered. We are good people, the father said. I tin can only imagine what you're feeling, Miles answered. He explained, briefly, the juvenile courtroom process. This is wrong, the male parent told Miles, over and over. After the third time, Miles, fighting dorsum tears, said he understood, every bit a parent himself, the begetter's anger and hurting.
Fuck you, the father said.
I understand, Miles answered.
Only later, when he returned to the constabulary station, did Miles allow himself to cry.
When the parent asked why this was happening, Miles had been unable to say. But the answer traces to individual missteps and institutional breakdowns — all on a thou scale.
What happened on that Fri and in the days later on, when police rounded up fifty-fifty more than kids, would betrayal an ugly and unsettling civilisation in Rutherford Canton, one spanning decades. In the wake of these mass arrests, lawyers would run across inside a secretive legal system that's supposed to protect kids, but in this county did the reverse. Officials flouted the police by wrongfully arresting and jailing children. One of their worst practices was stopped following the events at Hobgood, merely the conditions that immune the lawlessness remain. The adults in accuse failed. Yet they're still in charge. Tennessee's systems for protecting children failed. Nonetheless they oasis't been fixed.
Chapter two: "The Mother of the County"
Eleven children in all were arrested over the video, including the viii-year-old taken in by error. Media picked up the story. Parents and customs leaders condemned the actions of police. "Unimaginable, unfathomable," a Nashville pastor said. "Unconscionable," "inexcusable," "insane," iii state legislators said. Only Rutherford County'south juvenile court judge focused instead on the country of youth, telling a local Tv set station: "Nosotros are in a crisis with our children in Rutherford Canton. ... I've never seen it this bad."
Rutherford County established the position of elected juvenile courtroom gauge in 2000, and e'er since, Donna Scott Davenport has been the chore's only holder. She sometimes calls herself the "mother of the county."
Davenport runs the juvenile justice system, appointing magistrates, setting rules and presiding over cases that include everything from children accused of breaking the police to parents accused of neglecting their children. While the canton'south mayor, sheriff and commissioners take turned over, she has stayed on, becoming a looming figure for thousands of families. "She'due south been the guess always since I was a kid," said 1 mother whose own kids have cycled through Davenport's courtroom. Ane human being, now in his tardily 20s, said that when he was a child in trouble, he would pray for a magistrate instead of Davenport: "If she's having a bad twenty-four hours, most definitely, you're going to take a bad 24-hour interval."
While juvenile court is mostly private, Davenport keeps a highly public contour. For the past 10 years she'due south had a monthly radio segment on WGNS, a local station where she talks about her work.
She sees a breakdown in morals. Children lack respect: "It's worse now than I've ever seen information technology," she said in 2012. Parents don't parent: "It's simply the worst I've ever seen," she said in 2017. On WGNS, Davenport reminisces with the show'due south host nigh a time when families ate dinner together and parents e'er knew where their children were and what friends they were with considering kids called home from a landline, not some could-be-anywhere cellphone. Video games, the internet, social media — it'southward all poison for children, the estimate says.
Davenport describes her work every bit a calling. "I'm here on a mission. It's non a job. It's God's mission," she told a local newspaper. The children in her courtroom aren't hers, but she calls them hers. "I'm seeing a lot of aggression in my nine- and 10-year-olds," she says in one radio segment.
She encourages parents troubled by their children's behavior to use over-the-counter kits to examination them for drugs. "Don't buy them at the Dollar Tree," she says on the radio. "The best ones are your reputable drugstores."
Scrutinizing the inner workings of Tennessee's juvenile courts can be difficult. Courtroom files are generally off-limits; proceedings can be closed at a judge'due south discretion. But on the radio, Davenport provides listeners a glimpse of the court'south piece of work. "I've locked up one seven-yr-old in thirteen years, and that was a heartbreak," she said in 2012. "But 8- and nine-year-olds, and older, are very common now."
Davenport has lots of favorite sayings. "God don't make no junk," she says to kids, to instill self-worth. To instill fear, she volition say, "I'm going to let y'all be young and dumb — i time." At that place's no jury in juvenile courtroom, then Davenport decides the facts as well as the police. "And that is why I should become 12 times the pay," she likes to joke.
Davenport enforces a strict dress code in her courtroom, requiring people to "show deference." At that place will be no untucked shirts. No sundresses, spaghetti straps or spandex. No trunk piercings, no uncovered tattoos. Pants shall be pulled upward, and if a child shows upward without a belt, the judge keeps a bag of them, and if she runs out, "you'll just have to make do with a slice of rope," one newspaper profile said.
Davenport says children need consequences. "Beingness detained in our facility is not a picnic at all," she says on the radio. "It's non supposed to be. It's a consequence for an activity."
Davenport's tough talk — and the county'south loftier detention rate — go confronting a reform movement that started about the same fourth dimension she went on the bench. Starting time in the belatedly 1990s, the number of kids in lockup began to decline, both nationally and in Tennessee.
Davenport, now 69, grew up in Mt. Juliet, a Nashville suburb. She attended Center Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, majoring in criminal justice.
On the radio, Davenport says she has been "blessed" with an extensive history in law enforcement: "I was trained well in 17 years by different law enforcement agencies." As a juvenile court judge, she says, she tin can spot "subtle signs" of gang activity, "wearing something to the right or to the left, or a colour here or a colour in that location."
Her description of her job history doesn't always match employment records.
Davenport, in a sworn deposition, said her police enforcement career began in 1977 at MTSU, where, as a student, she worked total time every bit a university police officer for two to three years. Merely her MTSU personnel file shows her being a part-time dispatcher, then a full-time clerk-typist, then a full-time secretary.
In 1980, Davenport started every bit a dispatcher for the Murfreesboro Police Department. And then she took another job — not in law enforcement, but in the law department for Nashville, investigating financial claims that might include anything from car accidents to slip-and-falls.
At night, Davenport went to law school. She graduated in 1986. That aforementioned yr, she told lawyers in a deposition, "I started with the feds." She told radio listeners that for viii years she was "with the U.S. Justice Department, where I analyzed and tracked and helped identify serial killers." Merely this task wasn't with the Justice Section. Her employer, Regional Information Sharing Systems, received federal funding but isn't a federal agency.
She and so became a private investigator, treatment "by and large divorces," she told lawyers.
In a deposition, Davenport said she get-go took the bar exam near a yr after finishing police school. She failed, then kept trying.
"How — how many times have you taken the bar?" an chaser asked her.
"I passed on the 5th time," she said.
She was admitted to practise law in 1995, 9 years after getting her police force caste.
In 1998, she became a juvenile court referee, akin to a guess. One of the county's judges appointed her. (Asked why, he recently said, "I really tin't become dorsum and tell you.")
The post-obit year, Rutherford Canton violated federal constabulary 191 times by keeping kids locked upward likewise long, according to a story later published by The Tennessean. By law, children held for such minor acts as truancy were to appear earlier a guess within 24 hours and exist released no more than than a solar day later on that. The newspaper interviewed Davenport, who estimated one-half those violations occurred because a kid had cursed her or someone else. For cursing, she said, she typically sentenced kids to two to 10 days in jail. "Was I in violation?" she said. "Heck, yes. But am I going to permit a child to cuss anyone out? Heck, no."
In August 2000 — less than three months after the story was published — Rutherford County elected Davenport to the newly created job of juvenile court guess. Her opponent, a major in the sheriff's department, was later charged with sex crimes against minors and, in a plea deal, got probation. Davenport has not had some other opponent since.
With juveniles, police in Tennessee typically avoid cuffs and custody, peculiarly in less serious cases. They instead serve summonses instructing kids and their parents to show up in courtroom.
But that wasn't the routine in Rutherford County. When the Murfreesboro officers arrested the kids at Hobgood, they were following Davenport'south "procedure": arrest, transport to the detention center for screening, then file charging papers. "Information technology IS SO ORDERED," Davenport wrote in a 2003 memo most her instructions. Four years later she declared that even kids defendant of minor violations similar truancy must exist taken into custody and transported to jail.
Davenport once told Murfreesboro's Daily News Journal: "I know I'm harsh, I'm very harsh. I like to think I'yard fair, but I'one thousand tough."
In 2016, the Tennessee Lath of Judicial Conduct publicly reprimanded Davenport. In a family police force thing, a father'south lawyers had asked to move his case to some other canton. By constabulary, they were allowed to. But Davenport chosen "the father and/or his attorneys" a "sneaky serpent," the reprimand said. What'due south more than, she ordered that a transcript of her words be forwarded, possibly tipping the next gauge to her animosity. The reprimand found that Davenport's "intemperate conduct" threatened the right to a fair hearing.
In some other cases, appeals courts take taken Davenport to task through unusually blunt language.
In one, Davenport was overturned twice. Davenport, finding that a mother had neglected her daughter, granted custody to another couple. Two higher courts disagreed and ordered Davenport to reunify the mother and child. Instead, Davenport terminated the mother'due south parental rights. The other couple then adopted the girl, afterwards existence "exhorted" by Davenport to move quickly, co-ordinate to a state Court of Appeals stance.
The adoption went through while a challenge to Davenport's parental termination ruling was still pending. In the second go-round, a country appeals court approximate made articulate his displeasure, maxim, during oral argument, "Our piffling organisation works pretty but": If a higher courtroom tells a lower court to do something, the lower court does it. "That didn't happen in this example," he said. Ii months later, the appeals court overruled Davenport for a second fourth dimension. Saying information technology was "troubled by the proceedings to this point," the court ordered Davenport to reunite the female parent and kid — "expeditiously."
Davenport, through a spokesperson, declined our interview request, to which we attached 13 pages of questions. Previously, when asked about the canton's arrest practices, Davenport told lawyers that she "can't tell police enforcement what to practice." She told a local newspaper that her court produces "a lot of success stories." She told radio listeners, "I want the children that come in forepart of me to leave better than they came in."
Chapter 3: "Yeah, That'southward the Accuse"
Friday, Apr xv, 2016: Judicial Commissioners' office, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
On the same Friday afternoon equally three constabulary officers jammed into the assistant principal's office at Hobgood Elementary School, 3 other people huddled in another office a few miles away, to discuss what charge these kids could face.
Chrystal Templeton, the police officeholder investigating the video, wanted to arrest every kid who watched the fight and "get them all in front" of Davenport, she would say later during an internal police investigation. Charging them was helping them, Templeton believed, because "juvenile court is about rehabilitation."
Templeton thought an appropriate charge might be conspiracy to commit assault. But and so she met with Amy Anderson and Sherry Hamlett, 2 judicial commissioners authorized by Rutherford County to event abort warrants. Anderson told Templeton that she thought the but child who could be charged with conspiring was the kid who recorded video of the fight on a cellphone.
And so they went in search of another accuse, with Hamlett checking the state'due south criminal code on a figurer.
Templeton had joined the Murfreesboro Police force Section in 1998, when she was 21. By the time of the arrests at Hobgood, she had been disciplined at least 37 times, including nine suspensions. She one time left a loaded pistol on the seat of a patrol car, according to her personnel file. During a pursuit, she failed to plough on her nuance cam. Another fourth dimension she lost command of her patrol car and hit a Ford Explorer, which, in turn, hitting a Nissan Pathfinder while Templeton's patrol unit, spinning, smacked a Toyota Sequoia. In all, four cars were damaged and seven people injured, including Templeton.
In the lead-upwardly to the Hobgood arrests, Garrett, the school'southward principal, had heard grumbling about Templeton. Templeton was a school resource officer — not at Hobgood, but at ii other schools in Murfreesboro. Both schools' principals complained that Templeton was often absent. Meanwhile, one of Hobgood'south resources officers warned Garrett that Templeton'southward handling of the case was going to crusade a "shitstorm." But that officer didn't share her concerns with law higher-ups. She believed Templeton's sergeant always made excuses for her, so what was the signal?
Templeton had begun investigating on Wednesday, two days earlier. To try and identify all the kids, she asked around at schools and in the neighborhood where the fight took place. Ane parent she approached for help was Eastward.J.'due south mom. Templeton assured her no one was in trouble, that she just wanted to give the kids a talking-to, Due east.J.'s mom would say later. E.J., who was with her mom during this meeting, said she had been there. It was her on the video proverb, "Stop, Tay-Tay." On a piece of paper, on the hood of Templeton's patrol auto, Due east.J. and another girl who was with them listed the onlookers. And that was Templeton'due south investigation. "My case is the video and the list," she would say later, even though she couldn't match any bystander to any image in the video.
The victim, the boy being punched, told Templeton the kids were all friends at present. Templeton told him she understood. She so asked the kid, "Practise you think that at that place needs to be some consequences for what happened?" she would later recall. "And he said yes."
Templeton wanted guidance. She believed the boys throwing punches were too young to be charged with a crime. An assistant district chaser agreed. The assistant DA likewise told Templeton she didn't believe there was any single charge appropriate for all the kids gathered around. Just Templeton still wanted to charge them all.
Inside the judicial commissioners' role, Hamlett discovered an alternative to conspiracy to commit assault.
Her search turned up a Tennessee statute defining "criminal responsibility for behave of another." It says, in part: A person is "criminally responsible" for an crime committed by another if "the person causes or aids an innocent or irresponsible person to engage in" the criminal offence, or directs another to commit the law-breaking, or "fails to brand a reasonable endeavour to prevent commission of the offense."
Hamlett shared her observe with Templeton. They went through the statute line by line, with Anderson joining in.
"I looked at the charge to the all-time of my ability, from my experience was like, 'Yeah, that's, that'south the charge,'" Templeton would after say. (When she later on apprised a college-up in the police department, the college-up wasn't so certain. But he didn't warn her off. "No one ever said no," Templeton said later, calculation, "If somebody told me, 'No, terminate,' I would accept stopped.")
In the United states, it is typically the prosecutor's task to review a constabulary investigation and decide what charges, if any, to file. But Tennessee allows counties to hire judicial commissioners to fill this role. From issuing warrants to setting bail to conducting probable cause hearings, Rutherford County's judicial commissioners tin can have on tasks that traditionally fall to judges or prosecutors — without needing the legal training of either.
Canton judges recommend people for the job. County commissioners engage them.
Rutherford County opens the job to anyone with a Tennessee commuter's license and a loftier school diploma, supplemented by some college-level course work or vocational training and some part piece of work.
Anderson, a county employee since 1998, was disciplined presently before this case. According to investigative records, she had passed a note to a sheriff's clerk. The clerk tore it up, then left with Anderson. Someone fished the note's scraps from the trash and taped them together. The note read: "Could I get a few? If not, that's fine. It's my hip."
In an internal sheriff'south investigation, the clerk admitted giving Anderson two prescription painkillers. That was illegal, a lieutenant wrote. He informed a county guess, who said they "would handle the situation administratively." Anderson received a alphabetic character of warning, according to her personnel file.
Hamlett started as a judicial commissioner in 2008, making $8.50 an hour. Her application listed a high schoolhouse diploma, and no college. Her previous task was in a minor-town post office where her responsibilities included "estimator work and full general office duties."
When Hamlett came upwardly with "criminal responsibility for conduct of another" as a possible charge, there was a trouble. It's not an actual charge. There is no such crime. It is rather a footing upon which someone can be accused of a law-breaking. For example, a person who caused someone else to commit robbery would be charged with robbery, non "criminal responsibleness."
But in the judicial commissioners' office that Friday afternoon, 10 petitions were issued, each charging a child with "criminal responsibility." The petitions didn't distinguish the kids' actions; the documents were cookie-cutter, saying each child "encouraged and caused" two other juveniles to commit an attack.
Templeton signed each petition. Anderson also signed at to the lowest degree some of them. Templeton and so left the judicial commissioners' office, the 10 petitions in hand.
After the four arrests at Hobgood, other children named in the petitions were brought in by their parents or rounded upwards by police.
(Templeton, through her lawyer, declined to comment. Anderson and Hamlett did non respond to interview requests. A supervisor in the judicial commissioners' office told us the two had no annotate, and neither did he.)
On Sat, the day after the scene at Hobgood, law went to the home of a sister and brother who were 12-year-quondam twins. In court records they would exist identified every bit J.B.#1 and J.B.#2. Officers arrested and handcuffed both children, even as the girl cried and begged to stay with her mother, and the mother pleaded with police not to use handcuffs. The mother recently said, "It injure me to my center ... for them to take my kids." Two of her other children watched the arrests, as did three of her nieces. Subsequently, her other children had nightmares of beingness arrested, she said.
The officers put the twins in a patrol car and took them to the juvenile detention center to be processed.
Chapter four: "We Will Agree the Juvenile"
When police took the 12-year-old twins to the Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Heart on Saturday, April 16, 2016, the odds that either would be jailed were long, at least under Tennessee law.
Recognizing the impairment that tin come from incarcerating kids, Tennessee lawmakers take placed narrow limits on when a child accused of being delinquent tin exist held in a secure lockdown prior to receiving a courtroom hearing. The child must fit one of half dozen categories, precisely defined. They include being a jail escapee; being wanted elsewhere for a felony offense; or beingness accused, on substantial evidence, of a crime resulting in serious injury or death.
These two 12-year-olds were charged on negligible evidence with a crime that's non an bodily crime for something in which no i was seriously hurt.
Rutherford County, however, had its own system for deciding whether to keep a child under lock and central. Its written procedure, imprecise and broad, boiled down to whether a child was considered by jailers to be a "Truthful threat." Jailers allowed the 12-year-old girl to go home. Only they locked upwards her twin brother. Of the x children charged in this case, all Black, 4 were girls and six were boys. Every girl was released. Of the boys, four were jailed, co-ordinate to court records.
Those four boys became a minor function of a big grouping. In the fiscal year that encompassed April 2016, Rutherford County jailed 986 children for a total of 7,932 days.
J.B.#two, the 12-yr-old boy, spent two nights in the detention center, courtroom records show. While there, he was placed in solitary confinement every bit punishment for standing at his cell'south window, a lawsuit would later allege. Nosotros recently interviewed J.B.#2, whose name is Jacorious Brinkley. (He's 18 at present and is OK with us using his name.) A baby-sit, Jacorious said, kept walking past his cell, "saying, similar, 'You can't, you can't be by the door. Y'all got to sit.'"
The person who runs the detention center is Lynn Duke. Davenport initially picked someone else, simply her beginning appointee was arrested on a drug charge only hours afterward receiving the congratulations of county commissioners. Davenport speedily named Duke as replacement. Duke, a old youth services officeholder, became director on Jan. 1, 2001, and has remained in that role ever since.
Knuckles reports to Davenport, but does not consult her daily. In 2005, Duke emailed the judge to say she was feeling guilty for not checking in more. "If y'all need me to practise anything ... PLEASE TELL ME!" Duke wrote, to which Davenport replied: "Daughter, if I had any concerns or issues y'all would hear from me. YOU Practise A GREAT Job!!!!!"
When Duke get-go became managing director, the county detained kids in a deteriorated 19th-century jail separate from the court building. A local newspaper editorial bemoaned the sight this produced in the public square: kids, shackled together, in orangish jumpsuits, "shuffling along the sidewalk and into the Judicial Building." "Not that we're afraid to see juveniles cuffed and heading toward justice, but it is a disturbing thing that could be avoided if juvenile court could exist held at the detention heart," the editorial said.
In 2003, Rutherford County hired a consulting business firm to help design a new detention center. The next year the firm produced a lengthy written report, alerting Rutherford County that it was locking up kids at an exceptionally loftier charge per unit. Jailing children should be "the last of a number of options," the firm wrote. Less restrictive alternatives non only save coin, they're "more effective in reducing backsliding," making them better for children and the community.
Calibration down, the report recommended. Build a 35-bed juvenile detention center, with room to add on later. Also, build shelter care: 10 beds, in a residential setting, for runaways or other kids who pose no existent threat to public safe.
In 2005, Rutherford County dropped the consulting business firm and rejected its advice. The county opted for a 64-bed detention center, with no shelter care.
The center, attached to new courtrooms for Davenport and her magistrate, opened in 2008. The complex's cost, coupled with that of a nearby correctional work centre for adults, was $23.3 million.
Duke and Davenport have gushed about their new workplace. A "dream come true," Davenport called it. They offering public tours. "You'll come across booking ... bring your family … [accept] a little piece of cake," Davenport told radio listeners in a 2022 segment. They also lauded the jail staff. "We are a well-oiled auto, then there is non much to written report," Duke told canton commissioners.
On occasion, news reports have revealed embarrassing staff breakdowns. Duke fired 1 officer who pepper-sprayed a kid in his cell, afterward which the child chased the officer down and crush him up. (The officeholder, in a statement, said he was confident he followed procedure.)
In another case Duke promoted a corporal to sergeant despite a troubling disciplinary record; Duke then fired the sergeant later on she entered a cell, removed her belt and struck a child with it, according to an internal investigation's findings. The sergeant denied hit the kid, maxim she had just removed her belt and made a popping audio with it. (When we pulled this officer's personnel file, we discovered she had originally been recommended for hire by Davenport, who wrote a letter lauding her "professional demeanor" and "enthusiasm for the world of juvenile law.")
When the new center opened in 2008, Duke incorporated a "filter organization" into the jail'southward written manual. When law arrest a child, they bring the child to jail. There, nether the system, staff make up one's mind whether to agree the child before a detention hearing, which could take identify days after. Say a kid is hauled in for something minor, similar skipping school. Under the filter organization, the kid would be locked up if deemed "unruly." Only the filter system defines "unruly" simply equally "a TRUE threat," while "TRUE threat" is not divers at all.
So any kid, no matter the charge, who is considered a "True threat," nonetheless that'due south interpreted, tin can end upwards being locked up.
Plus, the police force can weigh in. In a 2013 email, Duke encouraged sheriff's officers to let her staff know if they wanted a child detained. "If they say I actually want this child held, 9 times out of 10 we can make it happen," she wrote. She went further in a memo to school resource officers, writing, "Even if we would normally release a juvenile ... whatsoever fourth dimension a local law enforcement officeholder requests a juvenile be detained and agrees to come to court to testify nosotros volition concur the juvenile."
Detention centre staff could exist quizzed on the filter system when upwardly for promotion, or disciplined for not applying it as written, according to personnel records. The staff member who fabricated her mode up to sergeant before being fired said in a deposition, "We were told when in doubt, hold them 'cause it's better to hold a child ... that should accept been released than release a kid that should take been held."
In 2016, Jacorious Brinkley joined in a lawsuit request for the filter system to exist stopped. When Duke was deposed in 2017, she called the organization a guideline. Asked when information technology applied and what it dictated, Duke repeatedly said, "Depends on the state of affairs."
"Is it your policy or not?" a lawyer asked Duke.
"No. Yes. It — it'southward a policy to utilize information technology when necessary," Duke said.
Duke declined our asking for an interview, writing in an email, "I capeesh your interest in Rutherford Canton and its youth, only decline to participate at this time." Elsewhere she has consistently expressed pride in her performance, proverb Rutherford County has the "best juvenile detention heart in the state of Tennessee."
Rutherford County doesn't just jail its own kids. It also contracts with other counties to detain their children, charging $175 a day. "If we accept empty beds, we will fill them with a paying customer," Duke said at 1 public coming together.
Duke reports monthly to the canton commission'southward Public Condom Commission. At these meetings — nosotros watched more than 100, going back 12 years — commissioners have asked regularly about the number of beds filled. "Simply like a hotel," one commissioner said of the jail. "With breakfast provided, and information technology's not a continental," added a 2nd. At another meeting a commissioner said it would exist "cool" if, instead of beingness a cost center, the jail could exist a "profit center."
When, at 1 meeting, Duke said "we get a lot of business" from a detail canton, a commissioner chuckled at Duke's discussion choice. "Business," he said. This brought bad-mannered laughter from other commissioners, leading the committee chair to say: "Hey, it's a business. Generating revenue."
Chapter v: "They're Not Coming Out Better Than They Went In"
Friday, Apr 15, 2016: Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Center
She had tried to stop the scuffle. The evidence was correct there, in the video. Stop, Tay-Tay. Terminate, Tay-Tay. And so, asked by police for aid, she had helped. The police had responded past arresting her, as she vomited and cried, maxim that she had "encouraged and caused" the fight.
When East.J. was taken to the detention middle, she was processed along with C.C., her all-time friend. Jail staff recorded E.J.'due south name and birthdate (she was 10 years quondam), conducted a 16-point search and confiscated her jewelry, all her small rings. And so they placed the two fourth graders in a holding expanse.
The air, the bench, everything was cold, Eastward.J. remembers. She heard buzzing, and doors opening and shutting.
E.J. and C.C. saturday and cried — E.J., who had tried to stop the fight, and C.C., who, as her sis had told Master Garrett, was non fifty-fifty at that place. She had been at a pizza party, jubilant her basketball game team's championship.
E.J. remembers C.C. proverb something to her sis, in a nearby holding jail cell, and she remembers the jail staff'south reaction. The grownups in charge told the children: Exist quiet. "It was like a enervating," Due east.J. recalls.
Eastward.J. was released the 24-hour interval of her arrest. Come up Monday, she was afraid to get back to schoolhouse, worried the police might pick her up again.
After the outcry over these arrests, the accuse against E.J. was dismissed, as were the charges against all the other kids. Only Due east.J.'south mom could meet signs of lasting trauma. E.J. had bad dreams about the arrest. She didn't trust the police force. For two or 3 months, E.J. received counseling.
In July 2016, ten-year-old East.J., through her mother, sued Officer Templeton in federal court. Her lawsuit was later expanded into a class action against Rutherford County.
Her lawyers wanted to know: How many kids were in that location who, similar E.J., had been improperly arrested? How many kids had, like Jacorious Brinkley, been improperly jailed? The lawyers gathered large samples of arrest and detention records from an xi-year period, catastrophe in Dec 2017. So they extrapolated.
They would eventually estimate that kids had been wrongly arrested 500 times. And that was only for kids arrested by the sheriff's office. This estimate didn't account for other law enforcement agencies in the county that followed Davenport's "procedure." Every bit for how many times the juvenile detention heart had improperly locked upwardly kids through its "filter system," the lawyers estimated that number at 1,500.
Based on their access to the normally confidential records, the lawyers created a spreadsheet showing that more than 50 kids, identified by their initials, had been jailed for offenses that wouldn't be crimes if they were adults. While almost were 14 or older, exceptions abounded. C.V., D.50. and J.S., all age 13, were locked up for being "unruly"; J.B., age 12, for "truancy"; and A.W., age xi, for "runaway."
The lawyers obtained the jail'due south intake procedures, detailing how kids are required to shower while watched by a staff member of the same sex. "Constant visual shall be maintained," the procedures say. All braids shall be removed, and every scar, mark and tattoo, unless "located in a private area," photographed.
The lawyers cited research on how arresting and detaining kids hurts not only the children, but gild. Kids who have been arrested and jailed are more likely to commit crimes in the time to come. They're more probable to struggle in school, and to struggle with drugs and alcohol. "Detention makes mentally ill youth worse," the lawyers wrote. Detention makes kids more likely to injure themselves.
In the grade-action lawsuit, one of the pb plaintiffs is Dylan Geerts. While Due east.J. alleged wrongful arrest, Dylan declared he was illegally jailed.
When Dylan was xiv, his uncle killed himself. The two had been close. Afterward, Dylan started talking of taking his own life. His dad took him to a infirmary, where Dylan stayed for a calendar week. Doctors diagnosed him as beingness bipolar and prescribed lithium.
Two months after Dylan turned fifteen, he spent a weekend nighttime with a friend. "Me and him were similar fuel to each other'south fire," Dylan says. They went looking for unlocked cars, for things to steal. Most 3:xxx a.m. on Sun, Sept. 15, 2013, a police officeholder spotted them. They ran, but he caught them. They had lifted a radio, a hat, a phone case and cologne. Dylan was charged with six crimes. The crimes weren't vehement. There were no weapons involved. Dylan had never been arrested before. Merely when law took him to the Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Heart, the staff, using the filter arrangement, locked him upwardly.
At the detention center, he says, he didn't get his lithium: "Not a dose." He spent almost all his fourth dimension lonely in his cell. Going off medication afflicted "my moods, my suicidal thoughts and my manic depressive disorders," he says. "Twenty or 21 hours a twenty-four hour period are a lot of fourth dimension to think and let your heed go wild, especially when you lot're bipolar." He felt jittery. "It'due south similar your breadbasket has dropped and your chest is real tight and y'all're existent nervous ... it's similar having stage fearfulness ... all day, every twenty-four hour period." Classwork was superficial. He was in high school, but they had him doing unproblematic multiplication: "11 times 11, five times 7 ... I got an entire worksheet of that."
In one case, he used the intercom inside his prison cell to inquire for toilet paper. "I was told I would exist put on lockdown if I used the intercom system a second time." Another time, exterior his cell, he was told by a guard that he had a phone telephone call from his male parent. "I stood up and then another baby-sit jumped up and said, 'You don't stand up unless y'all're allowed permission to stand,' and threatened to pepper-spray me."
3 days later his abort, he appeared earlier Approximate Davenport. She seemed hostile, he says, the hearing perfunctory. Davenport released him, simply placed him on house arrest. And so for more than than ii months he was either at home or at school. "Or yous're following your dad like yous're on a leash." He couldn't come across friends. He wasn't even allowed to text them.
Dylan'south dad would say that to his mind, house arrest was "the worst matter you could e'er do to a child, because he's looking out a window." Community service would accept been better, something "to preoccupy his time, non united nations-occupy his fourth dimension."
After Dylan was released from detention, he found his lithium no longer worked. He started on a string of other medications. He fell behind in school. In the sixteen months after, he tried three times to kill himself. To his dad, the change in Dylan was dramatic. Before detention, "He came to me and said, 'I was having problem with thoughts in my head.' After detention information technology was acting on thoughts in his head."
Dylan doesn't similar having his proper name attached to the class-activeness lawsuit. But "someone has to exist representative," he says. "If there'due south no bodily story to it, so no one cares." We interviewed Dylan this year, in his new home outside Rutherford County. He said if he could, he'd tell Davenport, "They're non coming out better than they went in."
The lawyers representing Eastward.J. and Dylan discovered that for children swept up in Rutherford Canton'south juvenile justice organisation, the harm could become beyond being arrested or jailed. Many children, in one case jailed, were placed in alone solitude.
In April 2016, mere days after the Hobgood arrests, Duke'southward staff received Davenport's approving to isolate, indefinitely, a teen with developmental disabilities. Jailers confined Quinterrius Frazier, 15 years onetime, to his cell for 23 hours a day while denying him music, magazines or books, except for a Bible.
By that time, President Barack Obama had banned lonely solitude for kids in federal prison, citing the "devastating, lasting psychological consequences." Merely Rutherford County allowed isolation in eight ascending levels, calling it "crucial" that kids "empathize in that location are consequences for all behaviors." Level one was for 12 hours. Level 8 was indefinite.
The lawyers for E.J. also represented Quinterrius, in what became a second class action. That federal lawsuit ended with Rutherford County being permanently banned from punishing kids with lone. A federal judge called the do inhumane. The canton, in settling, did not admit any wrongdoing.
Quinterrius recounted his time in alone in a court document. He wrote that with nothing to do and no bedsheets until dark, "I merely practice push up endtile I tin't anymore than sleep with my arm's in my sleeves untile I can't slumber anymore." Although it was forbidden, he sometimes talked through vents or cracks to whoever was jailed above or beside him. The hardest function, he wrote, was when jailers would comprehend his cell'due south window with a lath. And so he couldn't even come across another child's face.
We interviewed Quinterrius this summertime, with his mother. He's xx at present, and is fine with u.s. using his name. He told us that in lonely, he felt like an animal: "They open the flap, feed me and shut it." In his cell, he began talking to himself. And at present, five years after, "I still talk to myself a petty chip simply because that'south what I did for and then long." When we talked with him, he tapped on his telephone and pulled on his pilus. His mother, Sharieka Frazier, said since his time in lone, her son seems to need constant stimulation, from music, his phone, the television. "He's probably struggling now," she told the states during the interview.
"Are you struggling?" she asked her son. "Are you OK?"
"OK, I'1000 just, I'1000 OK, mama," he told her, dropping his caput into his palm.
Affiliate half-dozen: "In that location Were No Concerns"
In the firsthand aftermath of the arrests at Hobgood Simple, the Murfreesboro police main promised an internal investigation. By year's finish, the department had finished its report.
The officer who bailed before the arrests got a ane-day suspension. So did the sergeant in charge of schoolhouse resource officers. Iii other supervisors also were disciplined: the sergeant, lieutenant and major who had not stepped in, even as Officeholder Williams called them from the banana principal'southward part, raising the alarm. Each received a reprimand.
As for Templeton, who had initiated the arrests, the department made 1 finding: Her work had been "unsatisfactory." She received a three-day interruption — her 10th pause in 15 years — then kept working.
She retired in 2022 and, according to her LinkedIn profile, is now a life charabanc and fellow member of Mary Kay, a multilevel marketing visitor that sells cosmetics.
Nashville police also participated in this investigation, to produce an external study with recommendations. Together, the two police departments delved into ane of the case's biggest missteps: the use of a accuse that doesn't exist.
The district attorney for Rutherford County confirmed to the police investigators that there's no such crime as "criminal responsibleness." "Yous should never, ever encounter a accuse that says defendant so-and-so is charged with criminal responsibility for the act of another. Catamenia," he said.
The investigators interviewed xiii constabulary officers, four school officials, two prosecutors and a pastor. Just ii people refused to be interviewed: Amy Anderson and Sherry Hamlett, the two judicial commissioners.
They "failed to cooperate," a Nashville sergeant wrote. "This is unfortunate. ... Important information could have been obtained." In his recommendations, the sergeant wrote that it'south "worth considering" whether police should give more weight to communication from prosecutors than judicial commissioners.
Hamlett was reappointed equally a judicial commissioner in 2017, Anderson in 2019.
Their personnel files include no mention of this example.
All 11 children arrested over the fight captured on video sued in federal court. Defendants included the urban center of Murfreesboro, Rutherford County and diverse constabulary officers.
At to the lowest degree six of the 11 children had been handcuffed. The 4 who were locked up spent twice equally many days in jail, collectively, as Templeton did on pause.
Starting in 2017, all 11 children received settlements, for a combined $397,500. For at least v children, some money was earmarked for counseling.
Rutherford County also faced the class action accusing it of illegally arresting and jailing children.
In January 2017, Davenport arrived at a law business firm to be questioned by the lawyers for E.J. and so many other children.
Kyle Mothershead, a specialist in civil rights cases, deposed her. He knew almost Davenport's strict wearing apparel code — and he made sure to flout it. He wore bluish jeans and a white push button-down shirt, untucked. He later told u.s.a. he was thinking, "I am going to fucking spit in her eye and come in all casual and take her off her little throne."
Mothershead asked Davenport if she ever kept tabs on the number of kids detained.
"That's not my task is to know statistics," Davenport said.
Mothershead asked if she'd ever consulted with Duke about the filter arrangement.
Not that she could call up, Davenport said, calculation, "I don't micromanage her."
Mothershead asked about Davenport's orders to law enforcement to take children to the detention center upon arrest.
"Because that's our process," Davenport said.
"OK. But I only desire to brand sure that nosotros're clear," Mothershead said. "Then — so that — that'southward your process because you personally have ordered that process into existence?"
"From the orders, apparently so. Yes."
In May 2017, a federal guess ordered the county to stop using its filter system, saying it "departs drastically" from ordinary standards. By being subjected to "illegal detention," he wrote, "children in Rutherford County are suffering irreparable harm every twenty-four hour period."
This year, in June, Rutherford County settled the class activity, like-minded to pay up to $11 1000000. Private payouts figure to be around $ane,000 for each claim of wrongful arrest and well-nigh $5,000 for each claim of unlawful detention. The canton, as part of the settlement, "denies any wrongdoing in any of the lawsuits filed against it."
With the end of the filter system, Rutherford County now jails fewer of its kids than before.
Only that doesn't mean its jail is ramping down. Quite the reverse. The jail keeps adding staff. Mark Downton, one of Due east.J.'due south attorneys, says the county has "shifted gears." Forced to end jailing and then many of its own children, Rutherford County ramped up its pitch to other places, to jail theirs.
The county has created a marketing video titled "What Can the Rutherford Canton Juvenile Detention Center Practice For Yous?" Over saxophone music and b-roll of children in blackness-and-white striped uniforms, Davenport narrates. She touts the center's size (43,094 square feet), employees ("not bad"), access to interstates (I-24, I-65, I-40) and number of cells, which she refers to as "single occupancy rooms." "Let united states of america be your partner for the safe custody and well-existence of the detained youth of your customs," Davenport says.
Thirty-nine counties now contract with Rutherford, co-ordinate to a report published this year. So does the U.Southward. Marshals Service.
How did Rutherford County get away with illegally jailing kids for and then long?
The Tennessee Department of Children'south Services licenses juvenile detention centers. But its inspectors didn't flag Rutherford County'due south illegal filter system, which was right there, in black and white. We collected nine inspection reports from when Duke put the organisation in until a federal judge ordered information technology out. Not one time did an inspector mention the jail's procedure for deciding which kids to hold. "There was very little graffiti," an inspector wrote in 2010. "Neat and clean," the same inspector wrote in 2011, 2013 and 2014. Two inspection reports in 2022 said, "There were no concerns regarding the programme or staff at the detention center."
We requested an interview with the section'south longtime director of licensing, to ask how inspectors could miss this. The department refused to make him available.
The state'due south failures don't end there.
Tennessee's Administrative Office of the Courts collects crucial data statewide. In 2004, the consultant hired by Rutherford County used that information to sound an alert: Rutherford Canton was locking upward kids at more than iii times the country boilerplate.
But then, Rutherford County stopped reporting this data. From 2005 to 2009, the county had 11,797 cases of children being referred to juvenile court. How many were locked upwardly? The county claimed to have no idea. "Unknown," it reported, for 90% of the cases. The county's data, now meaningless, couldn't be used against information technology.
Later, when the canton resumed reporting how many kids it detained, lawyers representing children sounded a 2d alert. By 2014, the county was locking up children at nearly 10 times the land boilerplate. Merely and then the country stopped publishing its annual statistical study, which had provided the statewide comparison points that allowed troubling outliers to be spotted.
In 2017, a country task forcefulness on juvenile justice concluded that Tennessee's "information collection and information sharing is insufficient and inconsistent across the state." This "impedes accountability," information technology reported. The post-obit year, a land review squad reported that without good information, "the state cannot identify trends." The team recommended creating a statewide case management system with real-time, comprehensive data. Merely that hasn't happened.
Nosotros sent written questions to Tennessee'south Administrative Office of the Courts, request why it stopped publishing the almanac statistical study and well-nigh the data gaps. The office's spokesperson didn't respond.
While Rutherford County'south filter system was ultimately flagged (by lawyers, not through oversight), it is merely one illegal system under one juvenile court gauge. With Tennessee's inadequate inspections and information, there could be trouble in whatsoever of the land's other 97 juvenile courts, without any alarms existence sounded.
In Rutherford County, Davenport even so runs juvenile courtroom, making $176,000 a year. (She's upwardly for reelection next twelvemonth, and has previously said she'd like to run for another viii-year term.) Duke still runs the juvenile detention center, earning $98,000. And the organisation every bit a whole continues to grow.
In 2005, the upkeep for juvenile services, including courtroom and detention center staff, was $962,444. By 2022 information technology had jumped to $3.69 million.
Earlier this year, Davenport went before the county commission'southward public safety commission. "I come up to you this twelvemonth with a huge need," she said. By now she had two full-time magistrates and another who worked part time. Davenport said she wanted an boosted full-time magistrate. And another secretary. She wanted to increase her budget by 23%.
She too wanted to expand the system'south physical footprint. A small schoolhouse in the same building was closing, so Davenport proposed converting classrooms into an intake room and a courtroom.
The commissioners gave Davenport'south upkeep request a favorable recommendation. Their vote was unanimous.
During the meeting, one commissioner, Michael Wrather, took a moment to express his adoration for the judge.
"I have said this for years and years," Wrather told Davenport. "If we accept a approximate that has a box in the courtroom with belts in information technology, that requires young people to put a chugalug on and hold their pants upward in a courtroom, I'yard all for information technology."
"Give thanks yous, sir," Davenport said.
"Expert chore."
We're planning to continue reporting on the juvenile justice organization in Rutherford County and elsewhere in Tennessee. If you take any stories that y'all'd like to share, please get in touch. Meribah Knight's email address is [email protected], and Ken Armstrong's is [electronic mail protected].
Alex Mierjeski contributed reporting.
Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/black-children-were-jailed-for-a-crime-that-doesnt-exist
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