It was the afternoon of April 18 and I was driving from my job to a McDonald’s near J.P Taravella High School in Coral Springs. Classes had ended and I was picking up my 15-year-old son Lucca as I did every day. But that afternoon, before I could arrive, my phone rang. I answered and found a Broward County Sheriff’s deputy on the other end.

He and my son were at Coral Springs Hospital because Lucca had pepper spray in his eyes and doctors needed my permission to treat him. I was terrified.

“What happened to my son!” I asked him.

“He tried to attack my partner,” he answered.

That didn’t sound like Lucca, and I said so. I then found myself on the receiving end of a deputy yelling at me.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

I told him I would never disrespect him, but that my son was not that sort of kid. He said I could pick Lucca up at the juvenile detention center on State Road 84 after he was processed. I went there and while I was waiting my brother sent me a video of my son’s arrest taken by another student, which was already making the rounds online.

It showed a crowd of kids in the parking lot of the McDonald’s and two deputies, who were arresting another boy.  I saw my son near them bending over to pick something up – it turned out to be a cell phone dropped by the other boy. That was when one of the deputies pushed Lucca. When my son turned to see who had pushed him, the deputy shot pepper spray into his face. Then he tackled him, banged his face into the pavement more than once and punched him in the head, while a second deputy handcuffed him. Other kids in the crowd screamed, “He’s bleeding, he’s bleeding.”

Nowhere in that video did I see my son try to attack anyone.

I felt so much anxiety, I couldn’t breathe. I was in shock. My son had never been in any kind of trouble. I am the youth pastor at my church, New Mt. Sinai Pentecostal, and he and his siblings come with me to church every Sunday. I picked him up from school every day because otherwise he would have to walk through white neighborhoods in Tamarac, and I was afraid someone might accuse of doing something he didn’t do.

Now that was exactly what was happening, except it was the police accusing him of something he didn’t do. Those men are supposed to protect him, not falsely accuse him or beat him up.

Not long afterwards I was told my son would not be released that night, but I could see him in court the next day. I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept crying. I had always respected the police, both in the Bahamas where I grew up and here. That’s the way I was raised, and I never had a reason to feel differently. That’s how I have taught my children.

That next day in court the attorney representing Lucca tried to show the video to the prosecutor, but the prosecutor wouldn’t watch it. The judge determined that there was no probable cause for the aggravated assault charge. Days later, I went to the State Attorney’s Office and the charges against Lucca were dropped altogether. It was just announced that three deputies have been charged after the violent altercation they had with my son.  

Thank God students took video of what happened. If not, my son would be facing felony charges right now. He wants to go college. He’s on the football team and he dreams of playing football in college too. His dreams could have been ruined if it weren’t for those videos.

I know there are people who believe the police can do no wrong. I understand those people; I used to feel that way too. I never thought something like this would happen to me. When I saw stories like this on TV, it was as if I was watching a movie, something not real. Now I know differently.

When your own child is the one falsely accused, when it’s your own child’s dreams that could end up dying because of those accusations, you have to act. What I want now is justice for my son. In my mind, those men are guilty of child abuse and should be held accountable.

Clintina Rolle is the mother of Lucca Rolle

This op-ed first appeared in Florida Politics

Last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 7125 into law. Unfortunately, this long-discussed criminal justice reform legislation falls short of committing to meaningful change.

In passing this bill over more comprehensive proposals, Florida legislators threw away real criminal justice reform and millions of taxpayer money.

When the Florida Legislature convened its 2019 Session in March, the state was plagued by the overuse of mass incarceration and a corrections budget that had ballooned to $2.4 billion.

The Session ended May 4 with just as many people in prison — but now the corrections budget is $2.7 billion.

Many Florida families had pinned their hopes on promises of criminal justice reform. Extremely minor fixes were made around the edges of the profoundly flawed criminal justice industry in Florida. But the principle problem remains: Florida continues to throw away lives and massive amounts of money in ways that do nothing to keep our communities safer.

This is personal for me; I have a son in prison. But my family is only one of thousands suffering from a system that continues to believe in costly punishment rather than smart rehabilitation.

At one crucial juncture in the Session, legislators could have saved Florida taxpayers more than $800 million over the next five years. Currently, all persons convicted of felonies in Florida must serve 85 percent of their sentences. A bill passed by the Senate this year would have allowed nonviolent offenders who had exhibited good behavior and taken advantage of educational opportunities to be released after completing 65 percent of their sentences. Experts estimated that as many as 9,000 people could have gone free in the next several years — saving $20,000 per year per inmate.

But that reform was eventually rejected.

Another proposed cost-saving measure would have taken two reforms that were passed by legislators in recent years, reducing the mandatory sentences for certain crimes — including possession of small amounts of some opioids — and would have made them retroactive. In other words, lawmakers decided certain sentences were too extreme and unfair, but only for those convicted in the future, not those already behind bars. That makes absolutely no sense when it comes to either justice or economics.

In yet another failure, the legislature did not address, in any serious way, the processing of kids in adult courts. Florida sentences more youth to adult prisons than any other state and more than California, Texas, New York and Pennsylvania combined.

The legislature responded by eliminating the mandatory processing of certain juveniles as adults. And, while that change has the potential to impact up to a third of the cases that are affected, many of those minors will almost certainly end up in adult courts anyway after prosecutors make their decisions.

The current law still leaves the decision on “direct file” to the adult system in the hands of prosecutors, not judges. Neither children processed in adult courts nor their families have any way to appeal the decisions of those prosecutors.

In 1986, Florida set the threshold at which a theft became a felony — not a misdemeanor — at $300. This year, after more than three decades of inflation, lawmakers finally raised that amount, but only to $750. Meanwhile, in Georgia and Alabama the amount is $1500 and in Texas, $2500. So, while it is no longer a felony to steal an iPhone 6S, it still is for an iPhone 8.

Florida has another serious problem in the frequency with which it suspends driver’s licenses. In 2017, 280,000 people lost licenses for offenses that had nothing to do with driving. This year, lawmakers removed some misdemeanors from that list of offenses — petty theft, supplying tobacco or alcohol to a minor — but it was a drop in the bucket. Working people are seriously affected when their licenses are suspended. Yet another instance when lawmakers were oblivious to the effects on taxpayers’ wallets.

Along the way, lawmakers failed to address a critical problem that exists throughout Florida’s population whether adult or juvenile: racial bias and the disproportionate percentage of people of color funneled into the criminal justice system. Black people make up 17 percent of Florida’s population, but 47 percent of prison inmates are Black.

The Senate bill, adopted on a bipartisan basis, would have required that any criminal justice bill carry with it an assessment of the racial impact of that new law. It would have cost next to nothing to implement, but it was squashed.

Other Southern states have made much more progress on criminal justice issues, largely because they could no longer bear the cost of mass incarceration. Our lawmakers, meanwhile, have created a reputation for Florida as the most recalcitrant of the former Confederate states, unwilling to shed its Jim Crow past and willing to waste money to boot.

Only a collective group of fools would be professionally and ethically comfortable sustaining a stagnant system of mass incarceration.

Judy Thompson is the director of the Forgotten Majority, a nonprofit that advocates for prisoner’s rights.

I was just 17 years old when I was sent to solitary confinement in “Camp J,” one of the most severe lockdown units at one of America’s most brutal prisons, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. I languished in solitary for 16 months.

Back then I didn’t know that Louisiana was the solitary confinement capital of the world. All I knew was that I’d been convicted of a crime I didn’t commit, and I had to maintain my humanity in one of the most dehumanizing places on earth.

It’s called “23 and 1” because you spend 23 hours alone in your cell, with one hour to take a shower or make a phone call, if allowed. There are no educational programs.  You are stuck in your cell with just the voices in your own head and the cries of men who have already gone mad. Most of the other people in my unit were suffering from severe mental illness. I remember how they would ram their heads into the bars, play with their own defecation, or throw urine or feces.

The hardest part of living in solitary is trying not to lose hope. Each morning that I woke up in solitary I would quote the same serenity prayer I remember my father reciting when I was young. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The consequences are devastating. It’s been 22 years since my time in solitary and 8 years since my release from prison, but I still have flashbacks and nightmares. Even when I’m with someone else, I find myself secluded in my own mind. I call it being psychologically incarcerated. I’m learning to identify and deal with it, but I am still not normal.

A new report from the ACLU of Louisiana, Solitary Watch and the Jesuit Social Research Institute proves that the degrading conditions I experienced continue to harm other people. The report is based on a survey of more than 700 people held in solitary, and as someone who has experienced solitary first-hand, their stories ring painfully true. “These cells drive men mad,” wrote Carl, one of the report’s survey respondents. “I have personally witnessed one man take his life, another tried to by running the length of the tier and smashing his head into the front bars, sadly for him he still lives, if you can really call it that… Point is the cells are killing men and they know it….”

I hope that the information in this report will help prove to corrections officials that more changes are needed throughout the system, not just for the benefit of people living in solitary – but also for their families and communities.

The report contains specific, immediate recommendations for reducing the Louisiana Department of Corrections’ extreme dependence on prolonged isolation and moving quickly toward more safe, effective, and humane alternatives.

The need for reform is urgent. Because putting people in dehumanizing situations pushes them to do dehumanizing things. If your life is destruction, the only thing you can give out is destruction.

That’s why the United Nations has said that extended solitary confinement can rise to the level of torture, and called on countries around the world to ban the practice beyond 15 days.

Solitary confinement is an experience I will never forget. Just the other morning, my wife told me I was screaming during the night – and I knew it was a nightmare about my time in solitary.

But I’m strong, and through my work with Voice of the Experienced, a grassroots organization founded and run by formerly incarcerated people, I’m blessed to be able to use my experiences to press for reforms to combat mass incarceration and restore the civil rights of those most impacted by the criminal legal system.

For too long, the voices from Louisiana’s solitary cells were silenced. Through this report and the courageous advocacy of other survivors, we can help make sure they are finally heard.

Words by Kiana Calloway