Ten Boys...

Danny Matthews, Shawn Smith, Omar Paisley,  Martin Anderson, Willie Lawrence Durden III , Michael Ibarra-Wiltsie , Anthony Dumas and Chad Andrew Franza never met but they did have things in common: they were boys; they were in their teens; and they died while in the custody and care of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice and facaltys.

                                           

Posted on Sun, Jun. 04, 2

Rally seeks justice in boy's death

Vowing not to rest until someone is arrested for the death of Martin Lee Anderson, more than 400 people joined a protest march Saturday.

BY GARY FINEOUT

gfineout@MiamiHerald.com

PANAMA CITY - On a hot, steamy day, roughly 400 people, most of them from other cities and towns across Florida, quietly walked past the place where 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson spent some of his final hours.

The moment of silence was the one bit of quiet during a three-hour march and rally in this North Florida town that was designed to keep pressure on politicians, as well as media interest, in the case of the young man who died just a day after entering the now-shuttered Bay County boot camp.

''We won't rest until the people who murdered Martin Lee Anderson are convicted,'' vowed Bruce Gordon, national president and CEO of the NAACP, which helped organize the rally, as he led a group chant of ``No Justice, No Peace.''

Martin died Jan. 6, a day after he was repeatedly hit, punched and kneed by guards employed by the Bay County Sheriff's Office in a scene that was captured on videotape. He had been sent to the boot camp after being arrested for joyriding in his grandmother's car. Boot camps in Florida are no longer legal under a measure signed into law this past week by Gov. Jeb Bush.

An initial autopsy, performed by Bay County Medical Examiner Charles Siebert, said Martin died of natural causes because of sickle cell trait, a genetic blood disorder primarily affecting African Americans. But a second autopsy concluded Martin suffocated when a group of guards used ammonia capsules on him after he collapsed from running laps. So far no one has been charged in connection with Martin's death. After his speech, Gordon said that he has talked directly with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the need to have federal authorities step into the investigation if state authorities misstep. The state investigation is being led by Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober.

Gordon said his group help sponsored the march because he and others are worried that without continued pressure from the NAACP and other groups, the case will be settled quietly. Even state Sen. Tony Hill, a Jacksonville Democrat who joined the march, said some black officials in Panama City have urged black legislators to tone down their criticism, noting that one of the guards involved is black.

The rally at Tommy Oliver Stadium, home to Bay County's high school football teams, and the one-mile march featured a large contingent from Tallahassee, including students from Florida A&M University, Florida State University and Tallahassee Community College.

Chanting slogans such as ''We're Fired Up,'' the crowd walked slowly through a neighborhood near the stadium, then marched down the road that houses the Bay County Juvenile Justice Courthouse, the state Department of Juvenile Justice offices and the county detention center, where the boot camp was located. The chanting stopped, however, when the crowd filed past the boot camp where Martin's picture stood on an easel on the sidewalk.

Even though Gina Jones and Robert Anderson, the parents of Martin Lee Anderson, helped lead the march, most of those participating were not from Bay County. And the march itself attracted only a handful of onlookers.

Wayne Johnson, who spent his childhood in Panama City and returned 14 years ago, said he remains undecided about Martin's death but he said the case has divided people in his hometown.

''The white folks don't really understand the rage black folks have toward this event,'' said Johnson, who watched the march while sitting on his maroon Harley-Davidson motorcycle. ``It seems the black community is pretty much united. I always thought Bay County had really good race relations. I'm just disappointed this happened.''

Bill Stevenson, a 70-year-old native of Panama City, gave the marchers a thumbs down when they filed past. Panama City Police officers then asked him to leave.

''I think they are full of malarkey,'' said Stevenson, who said Martin was a ''juvenile delinquent'' and ''incorrigible'' and that no one should reach any conclusions before the investigation ends. ``They are trying to try this whole episode in the news media.''

Rufus Woods, pastor of Love Center Missionary Baptist Church and second vice president of the NAACP chapter in Bay County, could not explain why more local residents did not participate in the rally, although others noted that hundreds packed a Panama City church in February to protest Martin's death.

But Woods said more white pastors and white churches should join in the protest.

''It seems that many whites loves to deal with moral issues such as homosexuality and abortion,'' he said.

``I'd say Martin Lee Anderson losing his life is a moral issue. This issue is not about black or white. This issue is about right and wrong.''

Posted on Sun, May. 14, 2006

MIAMI HERALD WATCHDOG

Hidden truth of youth's death at camp

The official version of how 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson died obscured what really happened to him in January at the Panama City boot camp.

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER AND MARC CAPUTO

cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com

• Video | Boot camp beating (edited version)
• Video | Boot camp beating (full unedited version)
• Read letter from Jeb Bush to McKeithen
• Read Sheriff McKeithen's response to Bush
• Press release | Boot camp offender receives medical care
• Press release | Juvenile offender passes away in Pensacola
• Timeline of Boot Camp incident
• Versions of what happened

On the morning of Jan. 5, Bay County sheriff's Sgt. David Cruel called 911 to report a medical emergency at a boot camp for juvenile delinquents.

''We need an ambulance over here immediately, please,'' Cruel said. ``We got an offender that we just entered this morning. Looks like he's passed out.''

What Cruel didn't say: At least seven of his co-workers had spent more than half an hour manhandling 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson. They punched and kneed him, dragged him around and shoved ammonia capsules in his nose. When they were through, he lay on the ground, dying.

Hours after the 911 call, the sheriff's office, which ran the camp, posted a press release on its website, saying Martin had fallen ''ill.'' Headline: Boot Camp Offender Receives Medical Care.

Thus began a concerted effort to define Martin's death as a tragic but unforeseeable medical mishap, whether from illness or shoddy medical care.

From the Panama City boot camp to the state Department of Juvenile Justice, officials miscast the circumstances surrounding the youth's demise numerous times in the ensuing days, masking the brutal details of a death that brought national attention, major reforms to Florida's boot camps and the resignation of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's chief, Guy Tunnell, who had founded the boot camp when he was Bay County sheriff.

In those first days immediately after Martin's death, Tunnell's FDLE, which was investigating his former agency, refused to release the videotape of the beating. Meanwhile, some officials cast aspersions on Martin, portraying him as a malingering, belligerent drug user and gang member who provoked guards to use ''force'' to restrain him when he became ``uncooperative.''

The juvenile justice agency even floated a theory to lawmakers and The Miami Herald that Martin bled to death when emergency workers botched a procedure to insert a breathing tube, piercing the youth's windpipe.

The boot camp's narrative of Martin's final conscious hours contrasts sharply with the emerging picture of Martin as a victim of brutality:

Martin was suffocated by guards who held his mouth shut while they jammed ammonia tablets up his nose in an attempt to revive him, according to a new autopsy performed at the request of a special prosecutor, who also threw FDLE off the case after Tunnell sent chummy emails to Bay County's sheriff. No arrests have been made in the case.

OFFICIAL VERSION

The official version of events of Jan. 5, like Martin, died hard.

Even paramedics and emergency-room doctors -- whose treatment of the youth depended in large part on what they were told ailed him -- were told little. They were given a benign story by guards about a teenager who had mysteriously collapsed.

''After about 15 minutes of physical therapy, the patient said he could not go on, and he collapsed to the ground,'' Jeffrey Appel, the emergency-room doctor at Bay Medical Center, wrote, based on information he received from guards. The guards, the doctor added, ``used an ammonia capsule to the nose. He got some response from that, but then went completely unresponsive.''

Paramedics aboard a Panhandle air rescue service that airlifted Martin from Bay Medical to a trauma center in Pensacola say they were told only that the youth passed out from exercise.

''Patient was at juvenile boot camp -- running a 1.5-mile run,'' their notes say. 'Stopped midway through run, stated `I can't do this' and then collapsed.''

Doctors at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola were given the same story. In his discharge summary after Martin died, Dr. Jason Foland, the boy's attending physician, wrote that he was told that Martin was ``a 14-year-old male who presented to [the] emergency room after passing out at boot camp.''

The boot camp's nurse, Kristin Schmidt, expressed few concerns about Martin's treatment by guards when the state Department of Juvenile Justice's highest-ranking medical official, Dr. Shairi Turner, interviewed her shortly after Martin's death.

Schmidt referred to Martin's ordeal as ''use of force techniques,'' ''counseling'' and and an effort by guards to ``maintain control.''

''She noted that Martin Anderson was alert, looking around and made eye contact,'' Turner wrote in her report. ``The youth stated to her that he could not breathe, however, per her report, he appeared comfortable and in no respiratory distress.''

If the boot camp officials' story to doctors was sanitized, the information they provided to the public was positively sterile.

In a Jan. 5 press release posted on the Bay sheriff's website and e-mailed to reporters who inquired, spokeswoman Ruth Sasser said Martin was airlifted to a trauma center ``after becoming ill during Intake procedures.''

''The nurse began to take his vital signs and assess his medical condition,'' Sasser wrote. ``When she became concerned, EMS was called to the facility. Just minutes prior to the arrival of EMS, the offender became unresponsive.''

ILLNESS CITED

After Martin died on Jan. 6, the department twice repeated its claim that Martin simply ''became ill'' in a press release. Its headline underscored the fact that Martin died nowhere near the Panama City boot camp: Juvenile Offender Passes Away in Pensacola.

Later that day, however, Sasser acknowledged to The Miami Herald that guards had used ''force'' when Martin became ''uncooperative,'' but declined to elaborate.

''The body has been turned over to the Medical Examiner's Office and authorities are awaiting autopsy results,'' Sasser wrote in the Jan. 6 release.

But the autopsy itself began to raise questions. In her five-page report to DJJ administrators, Turner briefly recounted a conversation she had on the morning of Jan. 6 with Dr. Charles Siebert, Bay County's chief medical examiner:

''Reported that the Sheriff had requested that the autopsy be moved from Pensacola where the death occurred to Panama City where the boot camp was located,'' she wrote. 'Pathologist felt this was `highly unusual.' ''

Normally autopsies are performed in the county where a person dies. But Siebert has consistently denied saying the request to bring Martin's body back to Panama City was unusual. Turner insists he did, and said so at a hearing of the state House Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee.

The evening of Jan. 6, state Rep. Gus Barreiro, a Miami Beach Republican who spearheaded the boot camp reforms as head of the justice committee that controls juvenile justice spending, got a call from DJJ Secretary Anthony Schembri, who told him of Martin's death.

'He said: `I've investigated hundreds of these cases. He's a young black gang kid, and you'll find drugs in his system,' '' said Barreiro, who along with his committee has repeatedly faulted Schembri for lying to them.

In a written statement, Schembri responded: ``I remember telling the legislators that Martin's file indicated that he was a gang member. . . I was careful not to reach any conclusions based on preliminary information.''

Martin's arrests: joy riding in his grandmother's stolen Jeep, violating curfew while on probation for the car theft, and stealing candy.

WITNESSES TO VIOLENCE

The 10 frightened boys who were present in the exercise yard Jan. 5 also were told that Martin died of an illness -- although they had watched in horror as guards punched and kneed the youth and dragged him around.

Aaron Swartz, a Leon County 14-year-old who was admitted to the camp the same day as Martin, said a mental-health worker told the youths that Martin died of ''medical reasons'' and that the actions of guards ''had nothing to do'' with his death.

''She was telling us how athletes die every day, all the time, because of medical reasons. That healthy athletes stop and die, so it's not unusual,'' Aaron told The Miami Herald.

Martin's mother, Gina Jones, said she was given the same story at Bay Medical.

The boot camp's commander, Capt. Mike Thompson, was with her at the Panama City hospital just after 10 a.m., before Martin was flown to Pensacola, Jones said. She asked what had happened.

Thompson responded that her son ''ran two or three laps and just collapsed.'' Thompson couldn't be reached for comment.

At 1:30 a.m. when Martin was pronounced dead, Jones said that Lt. Charles Helms was with her and broke down, crying. ''That boy didn't deserve this,'' she recalled him saying. ``He never told me he was one of the first people to put his hands on my baby.''

Bay Sheriff Frank McKeithen, though, knew it would only get worse -- because of a videotape of Martin's last moments. In an unusual move, he issued a statement on Jan. 17 saying the tape would eventually lead to ``many questions, concerns and accusations.''

Yet McKeithen, who on several occasions has expressed sympathy for the dead teen's family, didn't discuss the tape's contents at the time, nor would the FDLE, which possessed it.

But two state representatives who privately insisted on viewing the tape couldn't keep quiet after what they saw. Barreiro and Democrat Dan Gelber told The Miami Herald for a Feb. 9 story that Martin had been ''brutally'' beaten and ``flung around like a rag doll.''

FDLE Commissioner Tunnell shot off several e-mails that day, bashing the lawmakers and assuring McKeithen, who soon called the legislators ''loose cannons,'' that his agency would fight a request from The Miami Herald that the video be made public.

Tunnell received an e-mail that day from an FDLE assistant commissioner, Scotty Sanderson, who wrote that the medical examiner was expected to release his report soon and ``bring this case in for a landing quickly. Our side will be ready to roll out as soon as we get the toxicology findings.''

''Hurry -- BEFORE I get REALLY carried away,'' Tunnell replied.

The next day, Tunnell called McKeithen's cellphone, according to records obtained by The Miami Herald. McKeithen says the commissioner only left a message, as he did in four other calls listed in records from Tunnell's office cellphone.

''There were no calls that I had with Mr. Tunnell that were inappropriate,'' said McKeithen, who declined to discuss any specifics. According to the FDLE, the agency was working on 11 other cases with the sheriff's office when the calls were made.

A week later, on Feb. 16, Siebert, the Bay County medical examiner, released his report, concluding that Martin died of natural causes when an undetected genetic blood disorder, sickle cell trait, together with rigorous exercise, led him to bleed to death. Tunnell placed a call to McKeithen's cellphone at 9:35 that morning.

Seven minutes later, Tunnell called the Bay County Sheriff's Office main line and had a nine-minute conversation with someone at the department.

Early the following morning, Tunnell and a key aide to Gov. Jeb Bush urgently debated by e-mail how best to release the 30- to 40-minute video that Tunnell had fought hard to keep private. In a 7:15 a.m. e-mail to Tunnell, the aide, Bush chief of staff Mark Kaplan, all but pleaded with Tunnell to release the controversial video in the state capital, not in Bay County.

''The press is already challenging FDLE's choice of location for this morning's press conference,'' Kaplan wrote. ``They are saying that you regularly investigate officer shootings and do not make an announcement from the officer's department.

``Your integrity is being challenged unfairly, and you are making it too easy for those who wish to allege that FDLE is part of some conspiracy.''

Tunnell ignored Kaplan's advice, saying that if his agency were to ''bow to the political or media pressure,'' it would empower his critics.

The videotape, released later that morning on Feb. 17 to a throng of reporters from across the nation, told a messier story than the official, sanitized narrative.

But in those hours before the tape was released, the state law enforcement chief and former Bay County sheriff was sure he could handle the criticism that McKeithen had predicted.

'There is simply no opportunity that would allow for any alleged `cover-up,' '' Tunnell said in his e-mail response to Kaplan. ``Not that there was any effort or intent to do so.''

If you are not outraged you are not paying attention!                      

TALLAHASSEE

Students stage sit-in, call boot camp probe 'cover-up'

Students are staging a sit-in at the governor's office, demanding 'justice' in the death of Martin Lee Anderson, a teen who died after being beaten by guards in a juvenile boot camp.

BY MARC CAPUTO, EVAN S. BENN AND MARY ELLEN KLAS

mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

PHIL COALE/AP /CROP

PICKETING CAPITOL: Outside the capitol building in Tallahasee, students protest the state's handling of the investigation into the death of Martin Anderson.

More photos

• Sit-in leader knew trouble as a teen
• Protest took plenty of planning
• Statement from the students
• Audio | Interview with protesters
• Audio | Students set forth demands
• Audio | Gov. Bush comments on sit-in
• Law exempts camps from DCF probes
• Audio | WLRN-Miami Herald News report
• Letter from Gov. Bush to the prosecutor
• Audio | Reverend Jesse Jackson
• Audio | Reverend Al Sharpton

TALLAHASSEE - Their business suits rumpled and eyes bleary, 30 college students staged an overnight sit-in at the Capitol Wednesday in protest of what they say is ''a systematic cover-up'' in the investigation of a teen's death after he was beaten by guards at a Panama City bootcamp.

The peaceful, old-school sit-in, organized with the latest cellphone technology and web sites, began in the office of Gov. Jeb Bush just after 9 a.m. when the students issued a list of demands that he become more active in the case and apologize to the parents of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson.

Bush waited the students out behind locked doors, insisting on a private meeting with only four of their leaders at about 4 p.m. After the meeting, the students said the governor was being ''political'' in saying he couldn't do most of what they asked. Bush then announced he'd meet with the dead teen's parents today.

The students pledged to stay on the hard floors of the Capitol anyway, saying more attention needs to be brought to the case, which is under state and federal investigation.

WAITING FOR ACTION

''A boy has been murdered. A boy has been killed. A boy has been beaten. A boy has been slammed to the ground. His life has been taken away. And we have not had action in 105 days,'' said Ramon Alexander, 21, student body president at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.

But the governor's office, which weathered a high-profile sit-in by two black lawmakers in 2000, ensured they wouldn't remain in his office's foyer: Capitol police refused to allow anyone leaving the governor's foyer after 5 p.m. to return, effectively forcing the group of students into the hallway just outside the governor's office, an area lined by the portraits of Florida's past governors.

Democrats, led by Rep. Ron Greenstein of Coconut Creek, helped supply the students with extra food, water and blankets later in the day, when lawmakers learned of the sit-in and addressed the students. The provisions were the only major aid the students said they received from outsiders.

Echoing the attorney for Martin's family, Benjamin Crump, Rep. Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall, a Miami Democrat, said she was moved by the well-mannered youths sitting quietly in the governor's office.

''I'm observing them sitting, which is a precedent for standing up,'' she said. ``Ever since the civil rights movement, it has been the youth that have always been in the forefront of telling the truth. They are true leaders.''

Sen. Tony Hill, who joined then-Miami Sen. Kendrick Meek in the 2000 sit-in, said he was surprised by the protest and said he has been in contact with the students only about a Friday march on the Capitol to be headlined by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Hill and Sens. Frederica Wilson, of Miami, and Les Miller, of Tampa, met with Bush after the students did.

Hill said Bush planned to apologize to Martin's family, but a Bush spokeswoman wouldn't confirm that. The governor told reporters earlier in the day that ``my sympathies go to Martin Lee Anderson's family, obviously his parents, for the suffering they continue to have. But there's an ongoing investigation. . . Governors can't act without the process being respected.''

Gabriel Pendas, a 23-year-old Florida State University student from Miami and one of the fouur who met with Bush, said there has been too much of ``a systematic cover-up, from the claim that the young boy died of sickle-cell trait to the body being moved from Pensacola to Bay County for the autopsy to be done at the sheriff of Bay County's request.''

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's commissioner, Guy Tunnell, is the former Bay County sheriff who founded the boot camp. His agency was thrown off the case after The Miami Herald, which had to sue FDLE to make public a video of the beating, reported about chummy emails Tunnell shared with the current Bay sheriff, Frank McKeithen.

The students demanded that Attorney General Charlie Crist file a civil-rights suit against Tunnell and McKeithen, that guards and nurse implicated in Martin's death be arrested, and that Bush remove Bay County Medical Examiner Charles Siebert from office. Siebert performed the first autopsy, finding that the teen died of natural causes from sickle-cell trait, an ailment affecting primarily people of African descent.

A special prosecutor from Tampa, Mark Ober, ordered a second autopsy, the results of which were expected to be released by now. The students demanded that the results of the second autopsy be released. Ober's office wouldn't comment, though Sen. Wilson said Ober told her that it is preceding slowly because investigators are re-doing the FDLE's canceled investigation.

EXAMINER RESPONDS

Dr. Siebert, meanwhile, issued a sharp written statement.

''I urge special interest groups to put emotions aside and refrain from making baseless accusations and requests. I am an impartial medical professional whose job is to issue unbiased conclusions and opinions based on medical evidence and years of experience, as I did in the Anderson case,'' he said.

By nightfall in the Capitol, 10 black legislators vowed to sleep on their office sofas in the Capitol. As students began laying out mattresses and blankets, eight security guards prepared to stand by all night -- 50 feet away.

Eyeing it all, students such as Alexander wished law enforcement officers would have been as involved in Martin's case.

''We have a lack of faith in the justice system in our state. There are too many suspicious acts that continue to happen,'' he said. ``You can trick me once, you can trick me twice, but you're not going to trick me three times. Three strikes and you're out. They have struck out. And it is time for justice to be served.''

JUVENILE JUSTICE

Law exempts camps from DCF probes

An exemption in Florida law allowed boot camps to investigate child abuse claims without reporting them to the DCF.

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER

cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com

MARTIN

• Students stage sit-in, call boot camp probe 'cover-up'
• Students sing, study during overnight protest at Capitol
• Sit-in took plenty of planning
• Sit-in leader knew trouble as a teen

Though a surveillance video played around the country shows guards punching, kneeing and choking Martin Lee Anderson before he stopped breathing at a Panama City boot camp, Florida child abuse investigators are not looking into whether the boy died from abuse or neglect.

That's because both child welfare and juvenile justice administrators are interpreting one sentence in state law as granting Florida's five juvenile boot camps an exemption to requirements that all suspected or alleged child abuse be reported to the Department of Children & Families' abuse hotline.

The boot camps are the only programs under contract with the Department of Juvenile Justice that are not required to report suspected abuse to DCF's hotline. They also are the only DJJ programs that are allowed to investigate abuse claims themselves.

POLICY CRITIQUED

Chelly Schembera, a retired Florida social service administrator with extensive child welfare, juvenile justice and inspector general experience during 27 years with DCF, called the exemption ``a very bad public policy.''

''This is a license to commit police brutality at will,'' she said.

Ray J. Thomlison, dean of the Schools of Social Work, Policy and Management at Florida International University, which has trained hundreds of DCF abuse investigators, called the exemption ``extraordinary.''

''I would not have expected them to be exempt from reporting child abuse. None of the other agencies are,'' he said. ``Obviously, they should be held to the same standards as the rest of the community.''

Spokesmen for both DCF and DJJ refused to discuss the issue of child-abuse reporting at the boot camps.

Cynthia Lorenzo, DJJ's spokeswoman, said it is DCF's responsibility to interpret state statutes and decide which abuse calls to accept for investigation.

''DCF may choose not to accept the calls,'' Lorenzo said. ``DCF makes the [decision] on what calls to accept and from whom.''

DCF spokesman Tim Bottcher said he could not render what he called an ''advisory opinion'' about state statutes, or interpret the meaning of a state law. ''Beyond that,'' Bottcher said, ``this is a matter of two investigations, law enforcement investigations. For those reasons, we decline to comment.''

A spokeswoman for the Bay County Sheriff's Office, which ran the now-shuttered boot camp in Panama City where Martin Anderson was sent, declined to comment about whether it reported any instances of abuse to DCF, though records obtained by The Miami Herald showed that the boot camp was reporting abuse allegations strictly to DJJ, not the child welfare agency.

Martin's death is being investigated by a special prosecutor appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, Mark Ober, the state attorney of Hillsborough County. The FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office, based in Tallahassee, also are investigating whether boot camp guards violated the youth's civil rights.

Under Florida law, a variety of caregivers -- including foster parents, private school teachers, daycare centers, babysitters, relatives and group home operators -- can be held accountable for abusing or neglecting children.

EXEMPTIONS

But the statute adds: ``For the purpose of [DCF] investigative jurisdiction, this definition does not include law enforcement officers, or employees of municipal or county detention facilities or the Department of Corrections, while acting in an official capacity.''

DJJ's policy and procedures manual, called Quality Assurance, also requires all residential programs to ``immediately [report] first to the Florida Abuse Hotline and then second to the [DJJ] Office of Inspector General hotline. Law enforcement reports directly and only to the OIG Hotline.''

DJJ operates -- mostly under contract with private companies -- close to 125 residential corrections programs across the state, 26 of them in southern Florida. In southern Florida, only the Martin County Sheriff's Office's Sheriff's Training and Respect academy, or STAR, would be exempt from state child abuse reporting laws under DJJ's policy.

Still, the Martin boot camp -- which is expected to close in coming weeks due to budget shortfalls -- reports all allegations to the DCF abuse hotline, said Capt. Lloyd Jones, the camp's program director.

Jones acknowledges there has been ''some confusion'' over whether the camp is required to notify DCF of an abuse allegation. But, he added, the Sheriff's Office has opted to seek the additional monitoring a call to DCF affords.

''Our policy says here in Martin County we call DCF,'' Jones said. ''We wrote out our own policy.'' The camp also has posters throughout the facility, in both English and Spanish, telling youths how to reach the abuse line.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who runs a boot camp, said his staff also notifies both DCF and DJJ whenever an abuse allegation arises. ''We have both the DJJ and DCF hotline numbers posted prominently in the squad bays and hallway areas,'' Judd said. ``I am confident these children in our custody are looked after appropriately.''

LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT

Retired Miami-Dade Juvenile Judge Tom Petersen, who taught juvenile justice for 10 years at the University of Miami, said the abuse reporting exemption was designed specifically to shield police officers from child abuse allegations when they use force to arrest or subdue juvenile offenders.

''Clearly, the Legislature wasn't thinking about boot camps,'' said Petersen. ``They were thinking about a situation in which a police officer tackles a kid who's running away from a stolen car. It was not meant to cover a law enforcement officer acting as a child custodian at a boot camp.''

''This is a glib, self-serving definition,'' Petersen said, ``and the result of that glib, self-serving definition is the death of that young man.''

House bill named after boy who died at boot camp

The boot camp incident was captureds on videotape.

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/14351110.htm

BRENT KALLESTAD

Associated Press

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Putting juvenile delinquents into a military-style boot camp would seem to be a logical means of transforming rough-and-tumble kids into young ladies and gentlemen.

Many were opened in the early and mid-1990s when corrections officials were convinced it was the best method to help troubled teens mature and stay away from further problems. But that idea has fallen out of favor nationwide in the wake of research by criminologists that indicate the programs simply don't work any better than normal juvenile detention facilities.

The programs have also come under increased criticism after 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson died in January after he was kicked and hit by guards at a Florida Panhandle camp - an altercation that was videotaped by camp surveillance cameras and broadcast nationally.

That camp, run by the Bay County Sheriff's Office, was closed last month, but Florida still has four open, housing about 130 teens - down from a peak of nine camps and 364 inmates about eight years ago. At the concept's peak in the mid-1990s, some 4,500 teens were housed nationally in juvenile boot camps.

Some expect that downward trend to continue.

"As we know boot camps today, they're not going to exist," said Florida state Rep. Gus Barreiro, who chairs the House Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee. "Intimidation-based programming ultimately has a very short-term results, and what we want is that long-term results."

But the boot camps still have powerful supporters who say the programs work, including Gov. Jeb Bush, who said he has no intention of closing any more camps or changing their methods.

"They're going to look like a boot camp, feel like a boot camp," he said.

Leonardo Suarez, 20, credits six months in Polk County's boot camp in 2003 with helping to turn his life around. At the time, he used drugs and hung with a tough crowd.

"Boot camp is where they teach you self-esteem, discipline and you just got to go by the rules," he told a legislative committee earlier this spring. "If you disrespect somebody they just make you do push ups."

Now he's got a job, a wife and his own house.

"I wish you could keep this chance for other people," Suarez said. "A second chance in life like I have."

While details vary, a typical day at a boot camp begins at 5 a.m. with an exercise routine that precedes breakfast and class work. The teens, most of whom in trouble for midlevel crimes like burglary or drugs, are supervised by guards playing the role of drill sergeants, yelling in the teens' faces, making sure they follow the rules, pushing them when they falter. The programs typically last between four and six months.

The new program being pushed by Florida lawmakers is certain to be gentler, albeit possibly longer with the addition of an aftercare component.

"I want the kids to be put in a program that gives them an opportunity to change so they can make it in society," Barreiro said. "Not just a program where kids go to get intimidated."

Opponents also point to studies that show that recidivism rates at boot camps are comparable to other moderate risk programs for juveniles.

They also say the camp guards are sometimes sadistic and racist, using Anderson's death as an extreme example of how inmates are treated. The tape showed guards as they kneed and struck Anderson, who had been sent to the camp after he was caught on a joyride in his grandmother's car and then violated his probation. After about 25 minutes, Anderson's limp body was placed on a stretcher and taken to the hospital, where he died the next day.

The medical examiner for Bay County, Dr. Charles Siebert, ruled Anderson died of hemorrhaging caused by sickle cell trait, a usually benign condition common among blacks, and no guards were charged. That ruling caused Anderson's family, Florida's black legislators and civil rights groups like the NAACP to claim a cover-up and that the teen was the victim of racism.

Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober to investigate and a second autopsy was performed by Dr. Vernard Adams, that county's veteran medical examiner.

And while official results are pending, Dr. Michael Baden, a nationally known pathologist who observed the autopsy for the Anderson family, disagreed with Siebert's findings.

"My baby was cold-blooded murdered," Anderson's mother, Gina Jones, said.

Also, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the civil rights allegations.

"That investigation should be just the start," U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said. "Congress has an obligation to ensure that children are totally safe when they are sent to residential treatment programs."

Aaron Swartz, a 15-year-old high school freshman from Tallahassee, had been at the Bay County camp for three months when he witnessed the guards hitting Anderson. He said the guards seemed to take delight in abusing detainees.

When he was told the next day that the camp's mental health counselor wanted to meet with the detainees, he knew what had happened.

"I wanted to cry," said Swartz, who was at the camp for a burglary. "(But) you can't show emotion so you've just got to keep going.

"It seemed like every day they (camp guards) came to work to try to hurt somebody," he said.

Swartz, who has asthma, was transferred to another program in Ponce de Leon a few days later and has subsequently completed the program and headed back to public school.

Swartz said the boot camp concept creates contempt for law enforcement as much as it does rehabilitate the juveniles.

"The worst part?" he said. "Being scared."

VIDEO: Life in a Florida boot camp and the death of Martin Lee Anderson
WARNING: This 8-minute video clip showing the fatal beating of a teenager may be deeply
disturbing to some viewers. Do not play it if children are present. Allow download time.

Listen to the protestors -   Student sit-in at Capitol enters second day               
Students stage sit-in at Governor's office to seek justice on behalf of Martin Lee Anderson
 HEADLINE NEWS:     Video Report -   DeFede Report & Video - Statements on 2nd Autopsy

A hunt for truth behind teen's death

OUR OPINION: BRING PROPER CHARGES IN LIGHT OF SECOND AUTOPSY'S FINDINGS

Contrary to the charges of a ''witch hunt'' from an attorney representing a Bay County Boot Camp guard, the second autopsy of Martin Lee Anderson was a search for the truth: What killed the 14-year-old boy a day after he was manhandled by guards after his arrival at the camp Jan. 5?

Dr. Vernard Adams, Hillsborough County chief medical examiner, determined in the second autopsy: ``Martin Anderson's death was caused by suffocation due to the actions of the guards at the boot camp. The suffocation caused by manual [blockage] of the mouth, in concert with forced inhalation of ammonia fumes that caused spasm of the vocal cords resulting in internal blockage of the upper airway.''

Punched and choked

This conclusion certainly comports with the contents of a videotape of guards punching, kneeing and choking the teen while a camp nurse watches. When the teen passed out, guards held ammonia to his nose to revive him. Only after Martin stopped breathing was medical treatment sought.

The second autopsy, part of an investigation by a special prosecutor, Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober, contradicts the scientist-challenged autopsy of Bay County Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Siebert. Dr. Siebert ruled that the teen died of natural causes brought on by sickle-cell trait. Sickle-cell experts disputed that finding. A growing clamor by Martin's parents and supporters and state lawmakers prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to appoint Mr. Ober to conduct an independent investigation.

While we wait for Mr. Ober to, we trust, bring proper charges against all involved in Martin's death, other issues beg for accountability. Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice rules call for use-of-force punishments like those inflicted on Martin to be employed only as last resorts to prevent a youth from hurting himself or others. It is clear that Martin, hanging limply from guards' arms in the video, was a threat to no one.

Passing the buck

Yet this abusive pattern was routine at the Bay County camp run by Sheriff Frank McKeithen: It filed 180 use-of-force reports with the DJJ over a three-year period for such things as inmates' ''shrugging'' or even ''whimpering.'' Only eight of 180 reports involved teenagers behaving violently. But the DJJ did nothing about these violations.

DJJ chief Anthony Schembri says his hands were tied because Sheriff McKeithen is an autonomous elected official. That buck-passing doesn't pass the smell test. The sheriff contracted with DJJ to run the camp and should have been accountable for his guards' behavior.

The only consolation in Martin's death is that it helped convince the Legislature to shut down the state's boot camps and convert to more-positive treatments for troubled youths.

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Second autopsy exposes the boot-camp coverup

Palm Beach Post Editorial

Wednesday, May 10, 2006