Teen lost his chance to finish turnaround
A teenager sentenced to boot camp was thriving at school, respectful at work, and - before the joyride - finally on track.
By ABBIE VANSICKLE and ALEX LEARY
Published February 12, 2006
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[AP photo]
Robert Anderson stands by his son's grave Thursday in Panama City. Martin wanted to play basketball and go to college, his parents say. Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died Jan. 6.
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PANAMA CITY - Martin Lee Anderson struggled at school, so his parents sent him to the Emerald Bay Academy, a school that specializes in underperforming kids.
Martin thrived. He excelled at math. He won a leadership award. He bested his classmates at chess.
"He was a well-liked young man," principal Joe Bullock said. "He did not create problems or disruptions in class."
But just as everything finally seemed to be going right, Martin's young life fell apart.
Martin was charged with grand theft after he and a few friends took his grandmother's car on a joyride.
On Jan. 5, the 14-year-old Panama City teen collapsed during his first day at a boot camp run by the Bay County Sheriff's Office and the state Department of Juvenile Justice. He died at a Pensacola hospital.
Martin's death has brought attention to Juvenile Justice's boot camps and provided critics a prime example of what they consider the system's failings.
Last week, two legislators claimed that a video of Martin's final hours shows several drill instructors beating him in the boot camp's yard. The tape, which has not yet been made available to the public or Martin's family, so infuriated state Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, that he compared it to the Rodney King beating.
That comparison angered Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen, who called the legislators "loose cannons" who had done nothing but "add fuel to an already volatile situation."
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Martin was born to Rober t Anderson and Gina Jones on Jan. 15, 1991. He lived in a tidy yellow house with green trim on Seventh Street with his mother and his sister, 13-year-old Startavia. His father and other family lived nearby.
Martin grew into a lanky teen who loved basketball, Archie comic books and Xbox. He never lacked for friends and was a leader among the neighborhood youth and at school. He wanted to play basketball and go to college, his parents say. He told his father he would like to drive a truck.
A poster of rapper Lil' Wayne is taped to his bedroom door. A phone next to his bunk bed still has his voice on the answering machine. A framed letter from a class assignment in November sits near one wall.
"I am like a shining star in the world," it reads in his tight, small cursive.
Martin begged his mother to let him get a part-time job at a Burger King in a convenience store on 23rd Street. He had wanted to earn extra money for shoes, a cell phone and to buy pizza and hot wings, she said. She relented, letting him work a few days a week.
"He worked harder than I've ever seen any 14-year-old do," said co-worker Debra Adams, 40. Martin often worked the early morning shift on weekends, something a less responsible teen couldn't have handled, she said. He regularly started those shifts between 7 and 8 a.m., she said.
He treated customers and employees with respect, addressing them as "Miss" and "Mister."
The idea of Martin acting up at the boot camp doesn't sit right with Adams. "I just can't see why they would have to restrain Martin," she said.
"He might have made one mistake, but he didn't deserve to die," she said.
That mistake was swiping his grandmother's car in June during church. While she sat near the front of the sanctuary, Martin, his sister and several friends slipped out of church and drove off. Their escapade ended when the car struck a pole.
Several months later, Martin broke his court-imposed curfew, and a judge ordered him to a boot camp, Jones said.
The family chose the local boot camp because it was only a few minutes' drive from their home. Shortly before he started his assignment, Martin and his mother met with a drill instructor. That's when Jones began to get a bad feeling, she said.
The instructor accused her son of being a gang member, she said.
"He said, "When you come in my house, you're on my rules,"' recalled Jones, 36.
On the day she dropped him off at the camp, they shared a final embrace. "He said, "I love you,' and the way he said it, he knew something,"' Jones said.
The next time she saw Martin, he was in the hospital. Blood was running from his nose, and it looked broken, she said. His body had swollen so much that the 140-pound boy looked about 300 pounds, his father said.
Jones said the family wanted to donate his organs, but they were told they were too damaged.
"Certainly, the family believes there was trauma," said the family's attorney, Benjamin Crump of Tallahassee.
Just what happened in the hours Martin spent at the boot camp, a single-story brick compound enclosed in a razor-wire topped fence, isn't yet clear.
Typically, a new arrival undergoes an evaluation by a nurse, a physical fitness assessment and an introduction to behavioral expectations by drill instructors, according to sheriff's spokeswoman Ruth Sasser. Some drill instructors are sworn law enforcement officers, she said, but it's not a requirement for the job. The exercise requirements and procedures are nothing out of the ordinary, Sasser said.
"It's very typical of any boot camp," she said.
That may be the problem, said Barreiro.
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Boot camps arose in the mid 1980s as tough-on-crime attitudes swept national politics. In 1987, as Florida prisons began to overflow, then-Gov. Bob Martinez signed a bill creating the camps. The first one opened in Manatee County in 1993. Boys in blue prison uniforms ran obstacle courses, marched in the sun and shouted chants.
"I used to live a life of crime. Now I'm doing boot camp time," one went.
But critics arose almost immediately, wondering if the flashy salutes, shiny shoes and dozens of push-ups in the dirt could reform young criminals. One scoffed that all it would produce was a "well-conditioned mugger."
By 1995, lawmakers were revisiting the idea in light of poor performance reports. One study found three out of four recruits at the Manatee camp were re-arrested within a year of release. Another study in 1998 found 87 percent of graduates from Broward County's now-defunct camp had been re-arrested. Today, five boot camps exist in Bay, Manatee, Martin, Pinellas and Polk counties, serving 197 youths. They must stay for at least four months, but most stay six.
Barreiro has emerged as the most vocal critic, arguing that camps are failures built on intimidation and abuse. One of his central points is that recent reforms in Florida calling for less aggressive tactics with youthful offenders did not apply to boot camps.
"The DJJ has known for years that boot camps didn't have to meet the same standards," he said. "Why does it take a death to show that's a problem?"
Barreiro called for their end after Martin's death in January but it was not until the video became known that his cause took hold, drawing national media attention.
"They are dangerous, they don't change behavior and they cost a lot of money," he said.
There has been one other death at a Florida camp. In 1998, 16-year-old Chad Franza hanged himself at the Polk County facility. His parents won settlements from the county, the Department of Juvenile Justice and the camp's private health care provider.
Though advocates still back the camps, additional research and recidivism studies aid Barreiro. The Department of Juvenile Justice's records show that 62 percent of graduates are re-arrested, a rate experts call high.
"They're simply not effective," said Aaron McNeese, a Florida State University dean who has studied boot camps. "Everybody equates boot camp with getting tough. Whether it works or not, it looks good."
Backed by the video, Barreiro heads with confidence into Wednesday's meeting of the House Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee. He scheduled a workshop to discuss the camps and whether they deserve continued funding.
It promises to be a heated meeting. One former sheriff, Pinellas' Everett Rice, is now a lawmaker on the committee. Stressing he had not seen the video, Rice said, "I don't think we should throw everything out just because of one incident. I think they have been successful programs."
Perhaps a greater obstacle is Barreiro's counterpart in the Senate, Stephen Wise of Jacksonville, who has said he supports the programs.
"Every once in a while something happens," Wise said recently. "It happens in prisons. It happens in real life, too. It's a shame. We just have to make sure we try to fix it."
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Jones is tortured by the thought of her son's final hours. The day she took him to the boot camp, his face looked as if he had been crying, she said.
She told him she had been crying, too.
It was okay to cry, she said, and promised they would see each other again soon.
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/02/12/State ... nce_.shtml