A Detroit judge ordered a teen girl to be handcuffed after she fell asleep during a field trip to his courtroom.
The 15-year-old was with The Greening of Detroit nonprofit during a visit on Tuesday to the 36th District Court to learn about the legal system.
When Judge Kenneth King was talking to the group, he noticed the girl falling asleep, according to WXYZ, a local ABC affiliate that had video footage of inside the courtroom.
“You fall asleep in my courtroom one more time, I’m gonna put you in back, understood?” King told the girl.
He then had the teen removed from the courtroom. King told WXYZ in a subsequent interview that this, however, didn’t stop her “attitude,” so he then made her put on a jail uniform and handcuffs and even threatened to put her in a juvenile detention facility, making other students on the trip vote if she should be sent away. King did not send her to a detention facility.
“That’s not something that normally happens. But I felt compelled to do it because I didn’t like the child’s attitude,” King told the local outlet. “I haven’t been disrespected like that in a very long time.”
The girl was identified by the Detroit Free Press as Eva Goodman. Latoreya Till, Goodman’s mother, told the Free Press on Thursday morning that her daughter was probably tired because the family doesn’t have a permanent residence.
“My daughter is hurt. She is feeling scared. She didn’t want to go to work. She feels like as if her peers went against her. She was real nervous and intimidated,” Till said.
The Greening of Detroit Chairperson Marissa Ebersole Wood called King’s actions “unacceptable” and said in a statement that the girl “was traumatized by the Judge’s unnecessary disciplinary treatment and scolding.”
King told WXYZ: “Do I think I was heavy-handed in what I did? No, I don’t. Because I’ll do whatever needs to be done to reach these kids and make sure that they don’t end up in front of me.”
But the 36th District Court found after a “swift and thorough internal investigation” that King failed to meet the court’s standards, according to 36th District Court Chief Judge William McConico.
“The 36th District Court, known as ‘the people’s court,’ remains deeply committed to providing access to justice in an environment free from intimidation or disrespect. The actions of Judge King on August 13th do not reflect this commitment,” McConico said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
The court temporarily removed King from his docket, meaning that he can’t hear cases at the moment, and ordered him to undergo “necessary training to address the underlying issues that contributed to this incident,” McConico said.
