Police in Florida have been filmed using zip ties to restrain a six-year-old girl who tearfully pleaded to be let go.
Kaia Rolle’s family released the body cam video showing her being arrested at a school in Orlando after allegedly throwing a tantrum in class and hitting three members of staff.
Kaia is heard crying as an officer puts the zip-ties on her wrists.
“No, no, don’t put handcuffs on,” she says, before being led out of the school. “Please, just let me go,” she sobs.
“What are those for?” Kaia asks about the zip ties in the video.
“They’re for you,” police officer Dennis Turner says, before another officer tightens them around her wrists and Kaia begins weeping.
"Help me. Help me, please!” Kaia pleads through tears.
As she is being walked to the vehicle, she cries: “I don’t want to go in a police car.”
A second officer, who has not been identified, responds: “You don’t want to? You have to.”
“Please, give me a second chance,” Kaia says.
The video shows the officer lifting the sobbing girl into the back seat of the police vehicle and putting a seat belt around her.
A short time later, Officer Turner returns to the office to talk to school administrators, who appear dismayed by what they have witnessed in the school office.
He tells them that the juvenile detention centre where Kaia was headed is “not like you think”.
The six-year-old was taken to a juvenile detention centre and charged with misdemeanour battery, according to reports. Prosecutors dropped the charge the following day.
Officer Turner was fired after an internal investigation by the Orlando Police Department in the wake of the incident last September.
Orlando police chief Orlando Rolon said at the time the police officer did not follow department policy of getting the approval of a watch commander to arrest someone younger than 12.
Kaia’s grandmother, Meralyn Kirkland, released the arrest footage in hopes it will convince officials to set a minimum age of 12 for arrests in Florida.
