A 16-year-old Detroit student who joined her class on a field trip to the 36th District Court got a real lesson on abuse of power when she found herself in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit thanks to a judge who didn’t like her attitude.
On Tuesday, The Greening of Detroit sponsored a program with a field trip to see a real courtroom in action.
Judge Kenneth King got upset at a minor for falling asleep during a program visit. Having a so-called bad attitude is not a crime, but the judge was unhappy.
“You fall asleep in my courtroom one more time, I’m gonna put you in back understood,” the Judge lashed out at the girl in the courtroom.
The student fell asleep, so the judge warned her she could go to jail at the juvenile detention center.
“The thing about the juvenile detention facility is a lot of the people that are there are not just bad kids. You have a lot of mentally ill kids there. The last time I was there, I had a kid who was actually sticking a spoon up their rectum and spreading feces on the wall,” he said to the young girl in the courtroom.
The egotistical judge then had the other students vote on whether he should send the girl to the detention center. The judge had the girl change into an orange jumpsuit and had her handcuffed.
“It wasn’t so much, in fact, that she had fallen asleep because I have attorneys that fall asleep sometimes, so that’s not too big of a deal. It was her whole attitude and her whole disposition that disturbed me,” King told 7 News Detroit. “I wanted to get through to her, show how serious this is and how you are to conduct yourself inside of a courtroom.”
He continued, “That’s not something that normally happens. But I felt compelled to do it because I didn’t like the child’s attitude,” King said. “I haven’t been disrespected like that in a very long time.”
However, the judge has been receiving backlash.
“Just totally inappropriate. There were so many other ways in which to have helped that young girl learn,” said, Larry Dubin, a former attorney with a background in legal ethics. “I have never seen anything quite like what I saw that took place in the courtroom.”
#Clique, what would you do if your child came home and said they got locked up while on a field trip by an arrogant judge?
