Reports, lockup's video tell 2 sides of broken arm

Danville Police officer Timothy Spears, left, starts to thrust the arm of juvenile D.B. up, near his head, breaking it in two places as Yell County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Spears, right, holds D.B. against the wall at the Yell County Juvenile Detention Center on March 22, 2014, in this video frame grab.
Danville Police officer Timothy Spears, left, starts to thrust the arm of juvenile D.B. up, near his head, breaking it in two places as Yell County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Spears, right, holds D.B. against the wall at the Yell County Juvenile Detention Center on March 22, 2014, in this video frame grab.

The police officer and the deputy entered the Yell County Juvenile Detention Center just a few minutes before 8 p.m. on March 22, and a group of boys playing cards around a table scattered.

The officers walked up to the locked door of the cell where 13-year-old D.B. was housed with three other boys.

As the officers approached, a woman in a tiedyed sweatshirt unlocked the cell, and the officers — one a Yell County deputy, the other a Danville police officer — gestured for D.B. to step out.

The 110-pound adolescent, dressed in a black-and-white striped jumpsuit, slowly walked out with his hands down to his sides and slightly in front of him. He stopped about a foot away from the two officers. One of the officers got in his face. The boy didn’t move.

Within five seconds, the boy’s left arm was broken, snapped in two as one of the officers wrenched it behind the boy’s back. A doctor would later find the bone was so badly broken, he couldn’t set it properly. The injury took more than four months to heal.

What happened to D.B. that March evening became the centerpiece of a federal lawsuit filed against several officials in Yell County last summer.

But new documents obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette show that the two officers — Yell County sheriff ’s deputy Michael Spears and Danville police officer Timothy Spears, who are brothers — approached D.B. at the request of juvenile detention staff members who wanted help putting the boy in The Wrap, a restraint device that the facility was using to punish youths for misbehaving.

The documents show that the incident was just one of more than 100 in which lockup employees decided to use restraints or force in response to nonviolent situations over the past four years — methods that often violated state juvenile detention standards.

The documents and a surveillance video from inside the facility also expose inconsistencies in what the officers told doctors and what juvenile detention center administrators wrote in a report about what happened the night D.B.’s arm was broken.

One of the officers told emergency room personnel that the boy “bowed up” on them.

The detention center’s then-assistant director wrote in her report that the boy was aggressive, noncompliant and appeared to be getting ready to hit one of the officers, so they had to struggle with him.

But surveillance cameras captured a different sequence of events. Video from the cameras was reviewed by the newspaper and published online today with the permission of D.B.’s family.

Attorney Michael Robbins, who represents D.B. and his family, said the video shows that the officers clearly had no reason to use force on his client but decided to rough him up as a form of discipline.

“They were using uniformed officers as enforcers,” Robbins said of detention center administrators.

Reached Friday, attorney Russell Wood, who represents Timothy Spears, said his client never intended to harm D.B. and noted that the Arkansas State Police found no reason to pursue criminal charges against either officer.

Wood said his client believes Danville bears the most responsibility for the incident because it was routinely using patrol officers as juvenile detention officers without properly training them.

Attorney M. Keith Wren, who represents Michael Spears, said his client declined to comment because of D.B.’s pending lawsuit against the officers.

‘FIRST INDICATOR’

Robbins and D.B.’s other attorney, John Burnett, said they believe the broken-arm incident exposes a culture inside the juvenile detention facility that condoned employees using extreme means to punish youths for minor misbehavior.

Those measures included The Wrap, which Robbins said guards had used on D.B. about a month before his arm was broken.

That time, D.B. was in the facility for three days for violating his probation for harassment and disorderly conduct, court records show.

When he returned home, his parents — Rusty and Jessica — found bruises on his wrists and back. The newspaper is not publishing the parents’ last name to protect D.B.’s identity because he’s a minor.

“We asked him what they were from, and he tried to describe to us what that device was that they put him in, and he said they left him in it all night,” Rusty said.

D.B.’s parents later found out that the facility had used a version of The Wrap meant for small children.

His parents said the device was too small for D.B. and caused the bruising. It also restrained the boy in an uncomfortable position for hours.

He later described to his older sister, M.B., that he felt as if “his back would snap in half.”

His parents said that looking back, they should have done something about the device then, but they didn’t know what it was.

“Hindsight, those first bruises should have been our first indicator that something wrong is going on at this place because they were bad bruises,” Rusty said.

Within weeks, D.B. was back at the lockup, this time for violating the terms of his probation by cursing at a teacher at Russellville Middle School.

Prosecutors described the violation this way: “with the purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm, did use abusive or obscene language in a manner likely to provoke a violent or disorderly response.”

Circuit Judge Ken Coker Jr. sent D.B. back to the juvenile detention center for 10 days.

By the night of March 22, his parents said he was close to being released.

“It was the night before he was supposed to come home,” Jessica said. “It was like 12 hours before he was supposed to get to come home.”

DIFFERING VERSIONS

Shortly before 8 p.m. that day, a report indicates that lockup staff members were getting ready to put D.B. in The Wrap again.

The facility’s assistant administrator, Robin Barefield, summarized what happened in a report obtained by the newspaper in response to a request under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

According to Barefield’s report, D.B. was acting up while staff members already had another youth in The Wrap.

“While we were completing the walk through, we were notified by detention officers Travis Carroll and Dylan Penzo that they were going to have to also place [D.B.] in the WRAP due to repeated disruptive and aggressive behavior,” Barefield wrote.

Barefield wrote that when she opened D.B.’s cell door for the deputy and police officer, D.B. was at first unresponsive to their requests for him to come out. He stepped out only after “repeated instructions,” she wrote.

When D.B. exited the cell, Barefield wrote, he had his fists clenched and appeared aggressive. She felt that he “was about to attempt to hit Officer Spears,” so she stepped away from them, her report said.

D.B. refused to face the wall, Barefield wrote, and deputy Michael Spears “turned” him around and put him against the wall.

“When this occurred [D.B] began pushing against Deputy Spears and Officer Tim Spears grabbed his left arm and brought it behind his back so they could apply the handcuffs and remove him from the cell area,” she said. “Once the cuffs were applied, Officer Spears instructed me to call an ambulance for the prisoner because he had felt his arm pop during the struggle.”

Once the medics arrived, they told the facility staff members to take D.B. to the emergency room. They took him to Chambers Memorial Hospital about a half-mile away, Barefield said.

D.B.’s medical records show that at the hospital, the law enforcement officers gave doctors their account of the events.

“He ‘bowed up’ to an officer and tried to strike the officer,” D.B.’s chart reads. “According to the officer, he pushed the prisoner up against the wall and the prisoner tried to raise his arms up to strike the officers and the officer grabbed his arm to put it behind his back to apply handcuffs.”

The officer then said that D.B. began complaining of pain in his left arm, according to the hospital record.

Robbins and Burnett take issue with Barefield and the officers’ version of events.

The attorneys said their client wasn’t being aggressive when the officers entered the room or while in his cell.

D.B. was calling out because he was trying to get staff members to stop other youths from making sexual comments about his sister. Among those making the comments was a boy who had raped someone, Robbins said.

Barefield’s account doesn’t include any reference to these remarks.

Surveillance video viewed by the newspaper doesn’t have audio or show what happened inside D.B.’s cell.

But the video does show what happened when the officers approached the cell.

THE VIDEO

In the video, D.B. started walking toward the cell door within two seconds of Barefield opening it.

It took him three seconds to walk through the door and stop in front of the officers. His hands were down and slightly in front of his body.

Deputy Michael Spears then got in the boy’s face and talked to him for three seconds.

Then the deputy grabbed the back of the boy’s neck with his left hand and slammed the teenager against the wall. Spears held the boy against the wall with one hand while holding a retractable baton in his other hand.

About a second later, officer Timothy Spears grabbed D.B.’s arm and wrenched it upward.

The bone can be seen breaking at 7:58:17 p.m. on the video.

Timothy Spears then pushes the boy’s arm up behind his head, and the arm appears to go limp.

Timothy Spears then pulls the arm down to the small of D.B.’s back and promptly applies handcuffs. The officer then turns to Barefield, says something, and they lead the boy out of the cellblock.

The whole sequence lasts about a minute. The camera captures not only the actions of the two officers but that of Barefield.

After leaving the cellblock, Barefield uses a nearby phone while Timothy Spears leads D.B. to an area of the lockup that isn’t in view of cameras.

About a minute later, another camera shows the officer leading D.B. into another part of the building. The officer holds the boy’s right arm while D.B. stands next to a desk and dry heaves into a trash can. An ambulance crew arrives a few minutes later, and D.B. is taken out of the facility.

A doctor later diagnosed a fracture of D.B.’s left humerus and decided to transfer D.B.to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock for more specialized care.

Officers then drove D.B. back to the juvenile detention center, where employees gathered his belongings and then took him to Children’s Hospital.

In the lawsuit, D.B. claims that while at Chambers Memorial, the deputy and the officer berated him for complaining about the pain and “called him a baby.”

“Timothy Spears’ and Michael Spears’ offensive jesting continued as they waited outside of D.B.’s room at Chambers Hospital. At one point, Timothy Spears joked that he wanted to take a Snapchat of D.B.,” the lawsuit claims, referring to the smartphone application that lets users send photos and videos that are intended to disappear within seconds.

The lawsuit also quotes an interview that Timothy Spears gave on March 28 to a reporter for KARK, Channel 4, and KLRT, Channel 16.

“I had to do what needed to be done. And today if I was called to do it again, I’d do it the same way a thousand times over. It would be nice to know what I did that was so unprofessional,” Spears told the stations’ reporter.

‘UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE’

Wood, who represents Timothy Spears, said his client couldn’t comment for this article because of a pending U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the matter.

Wood said his client believes that D.B.’s actions required him to restrain D.B., but he never intended to harm the boy.

“The kid tightened up and wouldn’t comply with his directions and so he simply was trying to restrain him, and an unintended consequence of that action was the kid’s arm broke,” Wood said. “There was absolutely nothing that would indicate to anybody that that was going to happen.”

Wood said he believes that the officers are being subjected to further investigation at the behest of Danville city officials, who failed to properly train the officers.

“The city of Danville had a policy or at the minimum a custom of using its city patrol officers as correction personnel at the juvenile detention center despite any training provided to those officers by the city of Danville,” Wood said.

Wood noted that the Arkansas State Police found no probable cause to file criminal charges against the officers.

“It appears that the city of Danville wasn’t satisfied with that, so they tried to pursue it through a special prosecutor,” Wood said.

Wood also disputed claims made in D.B.’s lawsuit that Timothy Spears teased the boy about the injury or joked about posting a photo on Snapchat.

Barefield, who was promoted to director of the youth lockup in October, declined to comment for this article and referred questions to the sheriff’s office.

In an interview at the sheriff ’s office, Sheriff Bill Gilkey and Capt. John Foster, his chief deputy, declined to discuss the content of Barefield’s report.

“I don’t comment on pending litigation,” Gilkey said.

Danville Police Chief Rick Padgett also declined to comment, citing D.B.’s lawsuit.

Timothy Spears and Michael Spears are currently under investigation by special prosecutor Jason Barrett, who will determine whether state charges should be filed in the matter.

In an email earlier this month, Barrett said the investigation “is very much ongoing. Because of this fact, I am not able to speak further about this case.”

Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said criminal investigators interviewed the two officers after the incident last March as part of a criminal investigation, but he could not provide further details.

Sadler said he could not say whether the two men were the subject of a separate investigation by the state police’s Crimes Against Children Division. State law requires that the division’s investigations be kept confidential.

Cherith Beck, a spokesman for the office of Chris Thyer

— the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas

— said she couldn’t confirm or deny whether a federal investigation into the March 22 incident was ongoing.

Timothy Spears was fired from the Danville Police Department on March 27. His law enforcement certification has since lapsed, according to the Arkansas Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training.

Michael Spears left the Yell County sheriff’s office on Aug. 13. His certification will lapse Feb. 13 unless he is hired by another law enforcement agency, the commission records show.

Beyond excessive-force claims against the two officers, D.B.’s lawsuit accuses the Yell County sheriff’s office, Danville Police Department, various city and county officials, and the juvenile detention center of violating D.B.’s constitutional rights and failing to ensure that only officers properly trained to work with youths were allowed into the facility.

All of the defendants in the case have denied wrongdoing. The case is set for trial in August.

‘ROWDY’ TO ‘ANGRY’

Since D.B.’s arm was broken, Judge Coker — who presides over juvenile cases in Franklin, Johnson and Pope counties — said he has stopped sending youths to the lockup in Danville in part because of what happened to the boy.

“We’ve been doing our best to try to keep kids out of there,” the judge said.

He said that before last spring he was not aware of any allegations of misconduct or poor treatment inside the facility. He also didn’t know about The Wrap until its use became public in a Democrat-Gazette article published in early October, he said.

D.B.’s parents told the newspaper that it took more than four months for D.B.’s arm to heal. The break was too complex for doctors to repair with screws or rods.

The doctors put his arm in a cast, but the bone kept separating, so they put a clamp on his arm, Rusty said.

D.B. spent many nights in a recliner with the clamp around his arm. His parents had to tighten the clamp to keep the bones together.

Jessica said the injury also changed her son’s demeanor.

Before, he was a boy who “had a mouth” but wasn’t violent or angry.

“He was a rowdy kid, not going to deny this, but he was a sweet kid,” she said.

But since the March 22 experience, he has become prone to angry outbursts.

His sister, M.B., said she’s seen him change from “just that annoying little brother” who could be fun to hang out with into a boy prone to outbursts.

“After he got his arm broke, the littlest things just make him furiously angry,” M.B. said. “I can’t even explain how different he is.”

Jessica said she hopes that telling D.B.’s story will help others step forward and tell how they were treated at the facility.

Rusty, who refuses to watch the surveillance footage of his son’s injury, said he believes the Yell County lockup is unsafe for youths.

“If that place was shut down, it would make me the happiest if no kid ever had to go back to that place,” he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Shea Stewart of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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