(CN) — Honolulu settled a civil rights lawsuit brought by the mother of a Black girl who was a 10-year-old elementary school student when police arrested her because of a drawing she made that was deemed threatening to another student.
The mother and the city and county of Honolulu filed a stipulation to dismiss the case Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii.
The total settlement amount is $175,000, including $150,000 from the city and $25,000 from the Hawaii Department of Education, said Mateo Caballero, an attorney representing the mother. The arrest record of the child will be expunged as part of the settlement, the attorney said.
The settlement with the city had previously been reported in local media but still needed final approval by the full city council.
"We are pleased to have reached a resolution for our clients in this case," said Jongwook “Wookie” Kim, legal director with the ACLU of Hawaii who also represented the mother and daughter. "We hope that both HPD and DOE will review and reconsider their policies regarding school-based arrests and handcuffing of minors."
According to the initial complaint filed on behalf of the student and her mother by the ACLU in January 2022, the girl — who was 10 years old at the time of her arrest — had been involved in a squabble with a classmate, leading her and her friends to later draw a cartoon about the incident.
Police were called to Honowai Elementary School the next day, after school staff were alerted to the cartoon by a concerned parent. The girl, identified as N.B. in the lawsuit, was then arrested, detained, and questioned alone by Honolulu police officers named in the suit. They released the child after four hours in police custody and did not charge her with any crimes.
N.B. and her mother Tamara Taylor accuse the officers of false arrest and excessive force, as well as race and disability discrimination claims since the girl has ADHD and was the only Black student involved in the drawing’s creation. The suit also names the Honowai Elementary vice principal who called the police at the behest of the parent who insisted the girl was dangerous.
U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor last year rejected the police officers bid for qualified immunity — a doctrine that shields government officials from liability for doing their job in many circumstances as long as they don't violate a person's clearly established rights — but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in part.
The appellate panel found that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity on the false arrest claim because the plaintiffs hadn't identified a case where police, under similar circumstances, were found to have violated the Fourth Amendment. The panel upheld the judge's finding that the officers weren't entitled to qualified immunity on the excessive force claim in so far as they handcuffed an otherwise calm and compliant child.
The district judge last year dismissed the family's claims of inadequate training, negligent training, negligent supervision and Americans with Disability Act claims against Honolulu and the Department of Education. She found the government defendants cannot be held liable for claims regarding the insufficiency of the police officers' training since the plaintiffs did not point to any specific policies or training procedures that might have been deficient.
The drawing at the center of the issue, according to a November 2021 Honolulu Police Department letter, showed a “graphic depiction” of a figure holding a gun with a severed head at its feet, accompanied by threatening phrases, including, “Stand down B**th”, “Yo F**kin days are over NOW”, and “Fake to me and DED!”
Representatives of Honolulu didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the settlement.
Full article can be found at: https://www.courthousenews.com/honolulu-settles-lawsuit-over-arrest-of-1...