Five officers, which also includes supervisors, from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice have been fired for falsifying records and for bribing detainees at the Miami-Dade Regional Juvenile Detention Center with drinks and snacks like Honeybuns and Skittles so that they’d beat one another. In August, 17-year-old Elord Revolte, was sent to the hospital after a brutal 20 detainee beatdown and died shortly after. It’s unknown if he died from one of those bribes for beatings practices, but the Miami-Dade Police and the state Department of Juvenile Justice are investigating.
The Miami Herald reported that the officers would arrange these beating as payback on occasion or sometimes they were arranged for the officers’ own entertainment. The Herald found out about this food for beatings exchange after Revolte’s foster mother talked to a reporter about it, who asked public defenders in Miami-Dade and Broward about it. On the following day an assistant public defender told Chief Assistant Miami-Dade Public Defender Marie Osborne that detainees in the lockup, many of whom they represented, confirmed that guards used honey buns to bribe detainees to beat someone else. One detainee told his lawyer a guard said, “I will put a honey bun on your head if you don’t do what I say.”
“In here, a honey bun is like a million dollars,” Osborne told the Herald. “Sometimes it’s Skittles. It’s not always honey buns. Sometimes it’s Snickers. If they really want a child hurt, and they really want to ensure a kid will do it, the big treat is any kind of fast food, like a cheeseburger.”
The Department of Juvenile Justice is investigating the allegations.
[via Daily Kos/Miami Herald]
