The Kids of Rutherford County - Ep. 1
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IT was a march afternoon in rough ford county, tennessee, growing community about thirty miles southeast of nash. Fill schools is out for the day, and he doesn't know. So little kids, we're playing a game of pick up basketball in someone's backyard.

And then as kids do, one said something about another kid's mom. This insult LED to some something. And then this could also do, one of them pull out a cell phone and started filming.

There's some kind of heavy neon filter over the whole video. So it's hard to make out any faces, but here's what you can see. And eight year old boy, hands shopped into the pockets of oversize parka, is trying to walk away from everyone.

When a smaller boy about five or six runs up behind him and smacks in the back a few times, then another little kid runs up and takes his turn. There was a couple of feedle punches to the back of the kid walking away. Some of the older boys are aggers them on.

Meantime, off camera, you can hear one girl try to break that out. Other kids just stand around watching, and a few of them are also filming on their phones, and then the video just ends. It's a type fight that barely seems we're posting online, but that happened anyway.

And soon the video started to make the rounds, spreading from the kids to teachers and eventually to one police officer. And it's what happened next once this officer got involved, that the story really begins because it's what cut everyone's attention to what's been happening to kids. And ruth for conney, it's what got mine from serial productions in the new york times.

I'm marian night. This is the kids of rutherford county. Episode one, the agreement video.

This is a mini meditation guided by bombers. Repeat after me. I'm coffee, coffee. I, I, I have zero blisters on my toes liter, and that's because I wear bombs. The soft socks, underwear, e and t shirts that give back one pertest equals go bomb stock s and use code N Y T for twenty percent off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S stock m slash N Y T and use code N Y T A.

Hey, it's john chase and mary hara from wirecutters, the product recommendation service from the new york times. Murray IT is gift giving time. What's an easy get for someone like under fifty bots in our gifts under fifty list?

I really love this water color set from japan, these beautiful, beautiful colors. It's something that kids can do, adults can do. I love that for all the wire cutter get ideas and recommendations had to N Y times dot com slash holiday guide. A few weeks after the fight, alex I Martin got a call from a police officer named Crystal temple.

Ton SHE said that markets was on the video once again in the five SHE was like he was buying and SHE would like to talk to them and that they wouldn't be in no type of trouble. So I made plans to make this .

later that day, alesia in a tanerton daughter, imai a drove to meet officer templeton on a side street.

So, uh, when I get there, my simpson shows me the video. And I was like, with this, not markey is bullying and SHE was like, where, you know, I wanna talk to the other kids and let them know what I do is not right. No one is in trouble.

I was like, well, okay, he said, so can you identify your kids? I say, yes, I can. I said, that's my daughter is the one who said, stop to take. There's my son over there. He's in the video but he wasn't saying that instigate and that SHE says, so who are the rest of the other kids? So my daughter SHE wrote down other kids names, and we gave .

them to our the whole thing seemed very casual. Alex a doesn't remember officer temptation even telling her that he was conducting an investigation. So when I, maria, alex IaaS daughter, leaned over the hood of the police car and wrote on the names of the kids in the video, SHE had no idea that what he was doing would lead to eleven kids, including yourself, getting arrested.

The reason why officer templeton was trying to ideal the kids in the video is because he believed all of them were some responsibility for the fight, or at least for not stopping at the two kids doing the actual hitting. SHE thought they were probably too Young during charges against, they look like they are about five or six years old, and in ruth ford county, they generally didn't charge kids under seven.

But what about the other kids? The kids standing around, the kids egging IT on. Officer templeton wondered if there was a charge that would apply to all of them. So we're lying on the memory of a ten year old.

Officer templeton took the list of names given to her by marie and headed to the country's juicier commissioner's office for guidance and what to charge them all with in rather for county judicial commissioners of the people who approved charges their office, the commissioner searched the state's database, and they found a statue that seemed to fit the bill, criminal responsibility for conduct of another. After templeton would later say, quote, I looked at the charge to the best of my ability from my experience was like, yeah, that's the charge. The judicial commissioner signed off, petitions were secured. Word went out, arrest these kids. As would later be documented over a dozen interviews with internal affairs investigators, the arrests did not go smoothly.

We're going to start with the may twenty seventh two thousand sixteen years of eleven A M charging c snatch of press responsibility in .

an office at the local police department. Timy garrett, the principal of school called hob good elementary SAT down with two of those investigators.

When did you become aware of the arrest that all type place at at your school?

The investigation of the well.

the investigation try going principal garrett told .

the investigators that officer temple ton had shown her the video of the fight on a wednesday, and by friday morning, tempting called to say the police were coming to hot good to rest some girls who were in the video. But right away, principal garret was concerned partly because the kids temple to named alga hadn't seen .

of them in the video, were kids, and there that are good kids, its goal. Then I started thinking, you know, what's going? Yeah, what's gone on? And I didn't see you in those kids.

Do SHE evening how SHE identified. And he had taught to the some kids and the parents what SHE said. And so I that well, she's investor at me, maybe seeks, I didn't know.

Still, principal gareth tt was worried. IT was a fourth theer as principal at hock elementary, and SHE spent those years working hard to build trust with parents and the kids at her school. SHE thought I certainly wouldn't help that relationship, but he was allowing police to come to the school and arrest kids, but SHE believed she'd have a choice in the matter, principal gar rett said. Officer templeton assured her the arrests wouldn't be disruptive.

SHE said. I want to promise that they weren't known to be hanka and that i'll be there and then take care. They are. They just great.

Gert told templeton her preference was that the girls be arrested before school let out. SHE didn't want a bunch of students in the whole way by the yard or in the bus lines seeing their classmates get taken out by police officers. But as the day we're on getting closer to school dismissal at two thirty after temple tins still hadn't shown up at hot good, instead three different police officers came.

And that's when things got confusing, crowded in the a system principles office, discussing what to do next, gar rett said one officer in a tactical vest was telling her, go get the kids. But a second officer was telling her, don't go get the kids. That officer seem to be having second thoughts about the whole thing.

So he kept telling, hey, it's not right. I think .

this .

is right specific, and I don't know what today.

The officer telling principal garrett not to go at the kids was Chris Williams in his internal affairs, in her view, officer Williams said, when he learned what these arrests were about, he was shocked.

IT was like, what in the world?

He was like what in the world because he'd seen the video of the fight the night before after officer template and and ask him to check IT out .

and he remembered when he watched IT s the agreement video you was something about SHE was like, yeah and i'm like where if you find any group key, they get out the first so this is what you going to see. This is Normal behavior of key.

Then there was this, all the kids in the video were black, and most of the students at hopgood were black. Or lino Williams, whose also black, said he didn't think temple ton, whose White was intentionally going after these kids because of their race. But he also said he couldn't help but wonder if something like this would happen at a school that was mostly White. Back in the assistance principles office, will he am started calling up the chain of command, even not to stop the arrests, at least to slow things down while they got some clearly on the situation.

and to. Have someone to you and thing what, at least think about what we do. The first .

person Williams talked to was a sergeant. They told him to go a forward with the R. S.

He then called others to try to get a different answer. He called a little tenant who didn't pick up. Then he got through to a major who essentially told him to just figure IT out.

Meanwhile, the officer in the room telling git to, yes, go get the kids with officer jeff karol. And he was making his own phone calls. Carroll was a patrol officer in a swat team member. He declined my interview request, but in his internal affairs interview, he said, while, quote, nobody likes to arrest kids at school, he had his orders.

I have, when I stand tels, do something as long as I know it's not illegal or a MaaS and moral, i'm going to do IT.

So who family said, go, good kids care. What made you listen to care at that point? Said, rather more .

aggressive one. So I want to get principle.

Garrett got three girls from their classrooms and eleven year old, a ten year old and a eight year old.

As I came up, you know, with the heart, with the girls as kind of trying to prepare them, I said, he guys, the police are here regarding the video. You can have to come to the office with me. But the oldest one was telling me, hey, these other two were not even there you know, from may stay in the video that I didn't see him in the video. So I thought maybe he had a pretty gentilman.

One of the girls even had now by sheep bone at a pizza ty with her basketball team the day of the fight. As get walk the girls into the office, SHE turned to the .

cops and said, these two were even there. And then of the Carol get very aggressive with me and he was like, right here in my face and he pulled out the cup and he said, we're going now. We're going on, is no more talk and and we're going now and I but you know, they said they were in there and his step the three times, really loud.

And here you had the handles to right in my face and scream at me. But I was scared and I don't want to go jail. And so I backed off, but I was crime.

And the kids were crying and they were screaming and reaching for me. And IT IT was awful. The other officers .

in the room don't recall screaming or yelling or offers Carol being particularly aggressive, but they do confirm kids are crying and emotions were running high. Principal garrett then told the police that one of the little girls had diabetes and got treatment when he got home from school. Karl go on the phone with a surgeon who told him that the girl could sit tight in the nurse's office for now, but the other two girls needed to be arrested after their Carol then turn to those two girls.

I told him, honey, sometimes come up, we have to take out down to the juvenile detention center. But don't worry, your mom and dad gonna able to pick you up as soon as we get down there. Of course, I start a crime.

the juvenile detention center jail, basically one of the largest in the state, a two tear jail with dozens of surveilLance cameras, forty eight cells and sixty four beds. In contrary, what officer carrell suggested to the girls, kids who get arrested don't always get picked up by their mom and dad as soon as they get there. Instead, according to the standard procedure, they can be booked, meaning jail staff record their names and birthdates to a sixteen point search and then place them in a holding area inside the school office. After Carol handcuffed eleven in year old and he dropped to her knees, a third officer handcuff the eight year old, but once they got to the parking lot, he took the handcuff s off because he later said, he quote, didn't really think choose a risk or anything back in the office, principal gets suddenly realized SHE forgot to get the last girl on temptings list.

You know, because I came in with those three and IT won't crazy with the yelland and staff. I I realized that I never went. Got kid from that was in the bus.

The kid on the bus was ten year old in marie. Not only was he the one who wrote down the names for officer templeton just the day before, but he was also the one in the video saying, stop, stop tate. And yet garet t was still being told together.

So I said she's on the bus, but now they said, go get her so I had already let turned the man and are yelled to me. I was always crying and um that may may go out there crying in front all my best students and get her .

off the bus so I will go my way home, you know, had that of school on our home.

This is maria.

but miss good, if you can forget me. And he had hear from her I and when he was very my year talking about the police, this when I broke down and this when I shot everything out, I was cared that in the world don't have, in our case of the jail, IT was just a light. And I was just trying to figure what more, no, what this happening? What am I can picture for?

So my first coming told me I need to get to the school because they was trying to take my daughter to the detention and um I said, okay and Normally .

this again is alex I A is mom .

when I get there I was some police officers there. They had my daughter SHE was crime upset someone up everywhere in police officers tell me that they had to take them out. They had to take her to the juvenile detention. I was like, you, I take with you, but out and they haven't done that. The in the day was like, what this is out our hands, you know you get a key is crying and I don't, anna, go to the attention, don't know what you're going to the detention and you got to hang your key is over to some strangers.

In total, eleven kids from across the county were brought to the juvenile detention center over that video, one of them by mistake, so he was released immediately. But the other ten kids were processed. When in marie was taken to the detention center, jail staff recorded her name and birthday, searcher compensated or jewelry, other small rings, and then place, turn a holding area.

I just remember being in a cold in hearing the sound of the body, go out in the doors, open in certain, and I was scared iria and .

five others got to go home the day they were arrested. But four boys, two ten year olds and eleven year old and a twelve year old, they were kept in jail overnight. Two of them were held all weekend. One of the boys told me about how he was forced to shower in front of guard and then given a jump suit and put in a cell alone, which was all standard procedure for kids put in detention and rough for county during waking hours. The kids aren't a lot to sleep.

Go to many people who told me that if they did falsely, or if they were caught lying down, the guard would bang on the cell door to wake them up or forced them to stand in the corner of their self for long periods of time. Ten, eleven, twelve year olds, our kids to play freestaters. They still snugly on the couch with their parents and hold their hands when they get scared. In other words, these were kids. More about what happened once the rest of the county and the world got wind of the arrests after the break.

By the time the last kid was booked into the juvenile detention center, the news about the arrests had got now a bunch of little kids arrested. Sum at school with handcuff s people were pissed, outrageous, spreading through one tennessee community after five children were holding one hundred parents met at first after church the week I just am angry. The shocks spread beyond just rough for the county.

Stories about the arrests appeared in the york times, the washington post, the daily mail, fueling the outrage. IT turned out that the charge brought against the kids criminal responsibility for conduct of another. It's not actually a charge.

It's a little technical. But criminal responsibility is a legal theory, one that was misunderstood by both officer temple ton who launched the investigation, and the judicial commissioner ers who approved the charges. The cases against the kids were later all dismissed. Soon after the arrests, the chief of police called for a thero investigation to get to the bottom of what happened of the twenty people interviewed investors or spent the most time with officer templeton.

So what will do is our first start with having you start to beginning where ever you think the .

beginning that well, as my report is on four thirteen and appropriate ten clock, a teacher showed me a video.

Officer templeton declined to speak with me, but he spoke to internal affairs investigators from seven hours. And in those interviews, he talked about what he saw when he first watch the video.

the fight. You know, the groups pushing these two little kids to assault to this other child is IT was the whole group, and they're basically all doing the same thing. At some point someone could have went in garden adult, i'm not saying, and jump in and physically start the fight. They could have been out in adult, no, when did he make thing?

So you felt allegations to and arrest as me and those kids as possible.

I did not felt obligated that point to arrest anyone, and I felt obligated to investigate IT that the test division .

wasn't going to .

o for much of this interview, the tone of craig snyder, ad investigator is what I describe as perplexed over how arrest this unusual could happen in the first place, but also tempting. SHE seems to think the arrests were all pretty straight forward. And her view SHE is just doing her job.

There is an sault here. There's a victim here. Juvenile court is about rehab. A and you have felt like I needed to do something to help with of these kids. If I can get them in front of the church, maybe we can put some services in the home, parenting, animal, whatever. It's about rehabilitation.

anybody? Any point? Does anybody any super fast? Did any of them at any point tell you, no, you are not going to do this? No.

no one ever said no. No one ever said, you know, legal. No one ever said to me that. They knew what I was doing, what I was doing. So if if .

someone .

is let me know, start.

So you won't change the way you didn't know this.

having the knowledge that I have today, knowing that all of this has turned into this. Yes, I would .

by this, I assume off the templeton is referring to many things, the public relations disaster that played out on the local news, the fact that he turns out the kids were arrested on a charge that doesn't even exist, and that he's probably definitely getting in trouble for this entire fisco, which he later did a three day suspension, but even still tempting, tells the investigators.

if we reverse why all of the knowledge that i've learned the last six weeks. No, I would do with the same, my edited.

This is one of the most striking things I came across in my reporting, the difference in perception between those on the outside of the juvenile system and those on the inside to the general public arresting a bunch of children and thrown them in jail for watching a fight seemed, among other things, way out of line.

But to many insiders, like officer temple ton or the sergeant who backed her up, the arrest made sense, saying, for the digital commissioners, even the juvenile judge, her response to the arrest was, quote, we are in a crisis with our children in ruthful, d county. I've never seen at this bad. It's hard to change a system when the insiders running that system don't see a problem with IT, but there are definitely was a problem.

In the years leading up to the arrest at hockey elementary ruthful d county's own data showed that IT was jAiling a staggering of kids the carney had been warned about. IT, actually, years before a consultation, had told county officials they were jAiling kids at more than three times the state average. Still, nothing changed.

In fact, the numbers just kept going up, which meant for the kids of rutherford county, getting sent to juvenile detention was almost a right of passage, a Normal part of childhood. In many cases, what IT also was illegal. This is a story of how that system came to be, how IT came to be built and how IT came to be accepted, lauded, even.

It's also the story of the two insiders, former juvenile delinquent themselves, who actually did see the problem in radford county. What I was doing, the kids, they just seen other people to see you too. That's next time on the kids of rutherford county.

The kids of rothfeder carney is a co production of serial productions. The new york times republica, a national national public radio IT, was reported by me marian night with additional reporting from can armstrong.

The show is produced by dying uni mat, with additional production by Michelle editing from july's niter and jan gua, along with Sarah blue stain and kanari strong at propulsion a and my colleague tony solis and nashville radio additional editing from a need a battery and alex called the its the supervising producer for serial productions is ended tube o research, in fact checking by ben fAiling with additional fact checking by naomi 杀 sound design， music supervision and mixing by fb wang. The original score for our show is from the blasting company. Susan westling is our standards editor and legal review from dana Green, aleman's sum r and Simon focus.

The art for our show comes from poly delkin additional production from gene python. Mac Miller is the executive assistant for cereal. Sam donny is the deputy managing editor of the new york times.

Special thanks to the folks at republica, including Stephen angle, berg, Charles, or in steen, Susan Carol, alex mire, just sky and hana cus and a nationally public radio. Thanks to Emily signer, the kids of rutherford county is produced by serial productions, the new york times republica nh. Ful public radio.