Kentucky sheriff 'steadfastly' defends officer who handcuffed 8-year-old

The sheriff’s office in Kenton County, Kentucky, has issued an unapologetic defense of a police officer who was caught on camera handcuffing an eight-year-old boy for 15 minutes in an attempt to restrain the child.

Charles Korzenborn, the sheriff in Covington, Kentucky, a small city bordering Ohio, robustly defended the officer who is seen in the video applying the handcuffs to the boy’s arms, which have been placed behind his back. The boy, named only as SR, is heard crying out in distress.

In a statement issued to the Guardian on Tuesday, Korzenborn responded to a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union by claiming that the police officer, Kevin Sumner, had done absolutely nothing wrong. The sheriff said that his deputy had done “what he is sworn to do and in conformity with all constitutional and law enforcement standards”.

Korzenborn added: “I steadfastly stand behind deputy Sumner who responded to the school’s request for help. Deputy Sumner is a highly respected and skilled law enforcement deputy, and is an asset to the community and those he serves.”

In the lawsuit, joined by the Children’s Law Center, the ACLU accuses the sheriff’s department and Sumner of violating both federal and state laws that prohibit the forceful restraint of children unless the pupil is presenting an imminent and real threat to their own or someone else’s safety. The suit alleges that by being shackled for so long the child suffered pain and trauma that exacerbated his diagnosed conditions of ADHD and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In the video, shot last November by a staff member of the public school in which the third grader was studying, Sumner can be seen applying the handcuffs around SR’s biceps as the boy’s wrists are too small to restrain. “You can do what we have asked you to do, or you can suffer the consequences,” the police officer tells the child.

SR is heard shouting: “My arm! Oh God. Ow, that hurts.”

Sumner, whose law enforcement duties cover several elementary public schools in Covington, is also accused in the ACLU suit of having twice shackled a nine-year-old girl named LG.

In his rebuttal of the legal challenge, Korzenborn said that Sumner had been called to the school by staff during school hours “after school administrators’ efforts to de-escalate and defuse a threat to others had proven unsuccessful”. The sheriff did not give details of what the alleged “threat” or why it was deemed necessary to apply handcuffs to a child standing 3 1/2ft tall.