The editorial was followed by two articles. Below is the first one.
This program is apparently run via an agreement between
Family Links Inc. and the local sheriff's office:
Several months ago, the Sheriff's Office and Family Links Inc., a children's behavior task force for the county, began the program as a way to let high-risk kids see what jail might be like.
Family Links Director Lyndsey Gillam said Thursday that children who have been suspended from school or those who have committed criminal offenses and are not behaving in their court-ordered education classes are eligible for the jail-work program, which does not have an official name and only began several months ago.[/list][/size]
The same video (as in the previous article) is accessible via the below article's title link.
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The Anniston Star ·
AlabamaSheriff Amerson's actions on tape out of character, colleagues sayby Cameron Steele · Star Staff Writer
Apr 01, 2011
Video appears to show sheriff accosting restrained teen
The minor's face has been blurred in this video to avoid revealing his identity.[/list]
Calhoun County officials who've worked closely with Sheriff Larry Amerson over the years said Thursday they felt the sheriff's actions shown in a video publicly released that morning were out of character. Those officials also said the video was taken out of context, although many of them acknowledged they hadn't seen the clip and didn't want to.
The video was first published by The Anniston Star after a source requesting anonymity gave it to the newspaper Wednesday.
It shows the sheriff using physical force on a juvenile male during an interview at the Calhoun County Jail.
A criminal procedure expert who watched the video has called the sheriff's recent actions "an outrageous assault" but former Calhoun County District Attorney Bob Field said Thursday any sort of violent action on Amerson's part is unusual.
"I find him to be kind of a quiet, laid-back sort of guy, who is very dedicated to his job," Field said. "And very professional about the way he went about investigating. That wasn't the case with all law enforcements officers."
Field served as the district attorney for Calhoun and Cleburne counties for 18 years, during which he worked on several major felony investigations with Amerson, a deputy sheriff at the time.
Amerson has worked in public safety since he graduated from Jacksonville State University in 1975 with a degree in law enforcement. Afterward, he spent 14 years as a deputy sheriff, six years as director of the Calhoun County 911 Board and the last 16 years as sheriff.
Field and others who've worked with Amerson throughout his law-enforcement career describe him as even-tempered and hard-working. They said they can't remember a time when Amerson acted violent toward anyone. A search of The Star's archives for the past two decades brought up no former reports of police brutality accusations against Amerson.
Calhoun County Coroner Pat Brown said he's worked with the sheriff on every criminal case that's involved a death for the past five years. The coroner said he has a hard time believing the two-and-a-half minute clip shows Amerson acting violently without cause toward a juvenile.
Dan Long, former director of the county's Emergency Management Agency, worked with Amerson in his current capacity as sheriff and also when he was the director of the 911 Board. He couldn't remember any complaints about Amerson acting roughly toward another person.
But Long, Brown and Field all said they hadn't watched the video clip and didn't plan to.
Videotaped 'talk'In the two-and-a-half-minute silent video, Amerson grabs the boy, who is seated on a bench next to him, handcuffed, shackled and dressed in an orange-striped jumpsuit. Amerson forces the boy's head back toward the wall by pushing on the boy's chin; the sheriff then holds the boy in that position for several seconds.
After a moment of what appears to be further conversation between the sheriff and the boy, Amerson uses both arms, one at the boy's shirt collar, to pull him backward against the wall again.
During an interview with The Star on Wednesday, Amerson acknowledged the video shows a portion of what he described as "a talk" between himself and the boy. But Amerson stressed he couldn't comment about any other aspect of that interaction because it would be unlawful to discuss a matter that might become a juvenile case.
'Excessive physical force'Field said he'd heard information from various people that the juvenile had spit at the sheriff to provoke him.
"That would certainly test your patience; that would certainly test mine," Field said. "From what I can see in the pictures (published in The Star), the worst that apparently happened was some shoving and pushing. He might have tried to push the guy away from him for trying to spit on him."
Calhoun County Sgt. Jon Garlick said he was at the Sheriff's Office, which is connected to the county jail, the day the talk between the sheriff and the juvenile took place.
"They called me when that kid started to act out," Garlick said. "Knowing what I know and without commenting on the criminal case, (Amerson's) behavior in the interview and the pictures from the video were not in any way an excess of force."
Garlick said he didn't watch the video published by The Star because he didn't need to.
Field said, in his opinion as a former district attorney, the still pictures taken from the video that were published in The Star and the story that went along with them did not represent Amerson using excessive physical force on the boy.
But LaJuana Davis, a criminal law and procedure expert at Samford University's Cumberland School of Law, watched the video Wednesday and call Amerson's actions a violation of the boy's rights.
"I would characterize this as an outrageous assault on a cuffed and shackled person," Davis said in an emailed statement.
After watching the video, Davis emphasized that there is no excuse for a law enforcement officer "choking a shackled person without justification."
An attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery also called The Star Thursday to express concern about the sheriff's actions taken against a child who was not even an inmate at the jail.
Amerson said Alabama law regarding situations that may turn into juvenile cases prevents him from discussing what, if anything, the juvenile might have done to warrant the kind of physical force the video shows the sheriff using.
Juveniles in jail?Amerson wouldn't talk about why the boy shown in the video was dressed in a jumpsuit, wearing cuffs and leg shackles. But he did say that any juveniles who are seen in the jail dressed in inmate jumpsuits are there at the request of their parents.
Several months ago, the Sheriff's Office and Family Links Inc., a children's behavior task force for the county, began the program as a way to let high-risk kids see what jail might be like.
Family Links Director Lyndsey Gillam said Thursday that children who have been suspended from school or those who have committed criminal offenses and are not behaving in their court-ordered education classes are eligible for the jail-work program, which does not have an official name and only began several months ago.
Parents — both those who want to keep kids who've been suspended from school busy and those who want to give children who've committed crimes a view of life behind bars — can sign waivers to send their children to work at the jail from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Gillam said that while the children are there, the Sheriff's Office employees who supervise them have discretion about when and how to reprimand them. And because the Sheriff's Office has that discretion, Gillam emphasized it's not up to Family Links employees to say whether punishment for a juvenile who's misbehaved should involve interrogation, handcuffs and leg shackles or physical force.
She refused to comment specifically on the actions the video shows the sheriff taking against the juvenile boy who was part of that program.
"I don't know all the facts of that case; I think there's more to it than is being reported," Gillam said. "I think that sheriff is being cast in a negative light."
"Not the whole story"Matthew Wade, who's served as Amerson's chief deputy for the past six years, said Thursday he and the sheriff wished they could give their full account of what happened.
"I'd love to give you the whole story and the whole entire video, if one existed," Wade said. "I don't think he's done anything wrong and I stand behind him. We want to be open and transparent about the things we do; if we've done something wrong, we'll admit it, we'll try to fix it."
Indeed, when the Sheriff's Office or one of its employees have fallen under public criticism in the past, Amerson has been open with The Star about those issues, their origins and how he would handle them in the future.
In October a Calhoun County Jail inmate escaped from Regional Medical Center, where he was in the custody of a corrections officer and a deputy. Then, Amerson readily admitted the mistake was on the part of the Sheriff's Office employees, who had let the inmate walk around without wearing leg shackles.
"There was an absolute breakdown in the security of this (hospital) room," Amerson said in an interview with The Star soon after the inmate, David Hunt, escaped. "There is no excuse."
A year earlier, when former Circuit Judge Joel Laird criticized the jail staff for the number of contraband items that got past the booking room, Amerson was up front then, too, and open to new policy suggestions for better jail security.
Contraband weapons "are a risk to the security of the jail, and we want to prosecute them," Amerson told a Star reporter back in October 2009. "If this is a change in policy, we're all for it."
Alabama Trooper Chad Joiner, the public relations contact for the troopers, said Thursday he sent the story about the recent video and Amerson's actions that was printed in The Star to officials with the Alabama Bureau of Investigations.
But both Joiner and ABI spokeswoman Robyn Litchfield said the state agency was not investigating Amerson at this time.
A spokesman with the Federal Bureau of Investigations in Washington D.C. said the agency could not confirm or deny whether it was investigating an active case.
Messages left at the FBI office in Birmingham were not returned Thursday.
Star staff writer Cameron Steele: 256-235-3562.copyright © 2011 Anniston Star.