Harmful techniques were outlawed at other facilities for youths in 2004.
By ALEX LEARY & CURTIS KRUEGER
St. Petersburg Times
February 26, 2006
TALLAHASSEE -- A month into his job, Anthony Schembri already was making a splash.
The new head of Florida's juvenile justice agency ceremoniously declared the end of aggressive force toward children in state facilities.
"You can't teach compassion by modeling callousness, and you can't teach respect for the law if you are showing disrespect," Schembri said in the summer of 2004.
Unnoticed, however, was that Schembri's reforms did not apply to workers at juvenile boot camps.
Now, with the camps thrust into the spotlight, some question if the exemption cost a 14-yearold boy his life.
"When you have a policy to protect kids, it has to go across the board," said Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, who has become a leading boot camp critic since last month's death of Martin Lee Anderson in a Panama City boot camp.
The death came after Anderson was pushed, punched and kneed by a half-dozen drill instructors and is the subject of a criminal investigation. It also has triggered policy changes that could ban the use of force at boot camps.
Critics say that means juvenile justice officials now are doing what Schembri did not do two years ago.
"What do you say to (Martin's) mother? `Now we understand it wasn't a good idea not to apply that policy to everyone?' " Barreiro said. "Sorry doesn't cut it. He'll never come home."
Schembri, the brash-talking New Yorker who was the model for the TV show "The Commish," declined to be interviewed for this story.
A spokeswoman said Friday that he did not include boot camps in the Youth Rights Policy because boot camps have a different philosophy toward rehabilitation than other juvenile programs.
"It's not like one size fits all," Cynthia Lorenzo said. Schembri, she said, knew local sheriffs operated the boot camps and their staff had "superior training" to that of other juvenile justice personnel.
But that training provides greater latitude for the type of tactics used on Martin Anderson.
"They've created a culture that is susceptible to abuse," said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, a former federal prosecutor.
Gelber said that even within the boot camps, there are different standards of force. "With what we have now, I'm not sure what the limits are," he said.
Critics say the differing standards reflect the clout of Florida's sheriffs.
"Schembri doesn't want to offend the good old boy network, the guys that believe that bashing a kid's face into a wall works. Sheriffs have huge leverage," said Clearwater activist Cathy Corry, who runs www.justice4kids.org., a Web site critical of the Juvenile Justice Department.
Lorenzo could not say Friday whether Schembri spoke to sheriffs about the policy change in 2004.
Whatever the case, he was not breaking tradition. Sheriff's offices have been permitted more leeway since youth boot camps began in Florida in 1993.
Manatee County Sheriff Charlie Wells, who opened the first boot camp, said the in-your-face tactics were seen as integral.
"It's a control factor . . . The boot camp would fall flat on its face without that initial intake," he said.
Wells pointed out that Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles and fellow Democrats controlled state government at the time and the concept was "unilaterally accepted."
The Department of Juvenile Justice did not exist then; the former Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services oversaw boot camps. The thinking at the time was sheriffs' employees already were subject to extensive training and did not need what HRS could offer, Lorenzo and others said.
Those regulations come under the state's Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission, a longstanding panel that governs law enforcement.
Most boot camp employees are trained under the defensive tactics component, which in 624 pages spells out how to take down subjects and apply some of the very moves -- hammerlocks, shoulderlocks and pressure points -- barred in other juvenile facilities. Those facilities, which include wilderness camps and standard juvenile detention facilities, follow the more restrictive Protective Action Response policy.
"Too many youth have been injured in incidents with these techniques," Schembri said in 2004. "While these holds may be appropriate for an adult population, experience has shown us that it is too easy to injure a young person when applying these holds. Physical restraint should be applied only to prevent a youth from hurting himself or others."
His memo disclosing those reforms did not mention that boot camps were not affected.
Juvenile justice officials already have taken steps to create a more uniform policy. A tentative list of changes that surfaced this week bar use of "pain compliance" at boot camps.
Some could see that as an acknowledgement that past practices fell short of the principles Schembri extolled two years ago.
"Hindsight is always 20/20," Caballero said. "It's like when an accident happens at an intersection without a red light. The first thing everybody usually does is call for a red light."
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