Two Maryland police officers assaulted and admonished a 5-year-old boy who walked off from school – with one deriding the kindergartener as a “violent little thing,” a lawsuit claims.
Shanta Grant, of Silver Spring, alleged in a civil suit filed Jan. 13 in Montgomery County seeking more than $1 million in damages that her son “walked out” of East Silver Spring Elementary School class while being improperly supervised in January 2020.
Two responding Montgomery County officers then caught up with the boy about two-tenths of a mile away and one of them, Officer Kevin Christmon, started aggressively chastising him and “forcefully grabbed” the youngster’s arm, the suit claims.
“Christmon’s tone and demeanor directed at [the boy] was more befitting a criminal, rather than a scared five-year-old child,” the suit states. “[The child] started to cry and Christmon continued to hold his [arm] and told him to ‘cut it out.’”
The officer then allegedly walked the boy to his squad car while insisting he stop crying.
“Get in!” the officer demanded, according to the suit. “Now! I’m not asking. Get in the car. Oh, we’re going to have problems.”
The boy didn’t follow the officer’s instructions, prompting Christmon to put him in his patrol car as a school employee looked on. His cries worsened once inside the vehicle, but the officer still wasn’t having it, the suit claims.
“I don’t want to hear it, I still don’t want to hear it,” the officer replied, according to the suit. “You better stop. You better cut that out.”
A second officer, identified as Dionne Holliday, then told the boy his mother was “going to spank” him before he was taken back to school. While on the ride, Christmon also told him he would’ve been beaten “nine times before he got home” if he ever ran away, the lawsuit states.
The officers, the boy and a school official then went into a principal’s office, where Christmon forcefully put him in a chair before yelling at the boy within inches of his face and saying, “I hope you mama let [sic] me beat you,” according to the lawsuit.
Holliday went on to accuse the boy of breaking a computer, destroying school property and hitting another student with a clipboard, suggesting she got confidential information from the school official, the suit alleges.
Christmon then called the boy a “violent little thing” before Holliday made motions to simulate a spanking while saying the boy wouldn’t be able to sit down if she disciplined him. She later suggested the boy, whom she called a “fool,” be put in a “crate” if he continued acting like a little “beast,” the suit alleges.
Reps for Montgomery County police and the Montgomery County Board of Education declined to comment Friday to Bethesda Magazine, citing pending litigation.
Attorneys for Grant told the outlet that the allegations are based on body-camera footage from one of the officers. An internal affairs investigation by the department is ongoing, according to the report.
“I’ve been doing police misconduct cases for 25 years … and every case is different, but I don’t recall ever having a case with a 5-year-old who was treated like this,” attorney Matthew Bennett said. “It’s 50 minutes of trauma to a little kid. That’s what it boils down to.”
The lawsuit claims the officers assaulted the boy and that Christmon unlawfully arrested him for putting one of wrists in handcuffs after his mother arrived at the school. It also alleges district officials were negligent in protecting the boy from harm. A pretrial conference has been set for Oct. 28, court records show.