Kaia Rolle was arrested at school when she was 6. Nearly two years later, she still ‘has to bring herself out of despair.’

• Kaia Rolle was 6 years old when she was arrested at school in 2019 after throwing a temper tantrum.
• The traumatizing incident is an example of how Black girls are criminalized in schools, experts told Insider.
• A bill passed in Florida aims to prohibit children under the age of seven from being arrested.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Meralyn Kirkland was in the delivery room when her granddaughter, Kaia Rolle, was born unresponsive. As the doctors worked to get Rolle to take her first breath, it was Kirkland who prayed over her, promising that she would be there for the baby if she pulled through.

Since then, Kirkland has been Rolle's guardian for most of her life residing in Orlando, Florida. Her granddaughter, who she calls her second in command, loved to sing gospel songs and hugged everyone around her. But this was before she was arrested at school when she was six years old.

Two years ago, on September 19, 2019, Rolle begged a school resource officer for a "second chance" as her tiny wrists were zip-tied and she was escorted out of Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy. Rolle was taken into custody after she reportedly threw a temper tantrum which Kirkland told Insider was triggered because of her sleep apnea, a condition Kirkland said the school was well aware of and makes her irritable during the day.

After the arrest Rolle had developed extreme separation anxiety, her grandmother told Insider. She would wake up screaming with night terrors and wet her bed until she had to move into her grandmother's room to finally go to sleep.

Kaia Rolle needed to stand on a step stool to take a mugshot, her grandmother says

"Don't put handcuffs on."

"Please let me go!"

"Give me a second chance!"

Rolle pleaded with a school resource officer as she was taken out of the school, body camera footage shows. The first-grader loudly cries that she doesn't "want to go in the police car," while being escorted to a police vehicle where she is placed in the back seat. Her sobs can be heard until the car door is shut.

According to Kirkland, the school resource officer, Officer Dennis Turner called to inform her about her granddaughter's arrest, which happened after Rolle reportedly punched and kicked school staff during a tantrum. Kirkland said the call felt like being on the receiving end of a punch she didn't expect.

"When he said arrested, all the wind went out of me. My brain could not process that she has been arrested and taken to a juvenile center," Kirkland said. "When I went into the office, there was a charge sheet. Next to the charge sheet were two photographs of my 6-year-old granddaughter. One was a side view of her face. One was a front view of her face."

Kirkland said at the juvenile center, Rolle was photographed, fingerprinted, and initially charged with misdemeanor battery. An employee at the center told her that her granddaughter had to stand on a step stool to take her mugshot, Kirkland said.

However, the state attorney dropped the charges against Rolle and expunged her record. Officer Turner was terminated from his job, for failing to get approval from a supervisor before detaining an individual under the age of 12.

"How do you put expunged in the same sentence as a 6-year-old child?" Kirkland said. "That's what's creating the school to children pipeline for our children of color."

"They have ruined her life over something that was 100% preventable," Kirkland continued. "She's still a loving child, but she's not as fun and loving the way she once was. Before, she saw some good in everything, and nothing used to bring her down, but now she has to bring herself out of despair."

More than a year later, the incident has led Rolle, who is now 7-years-old, to fear uniformed officers, her grandmother said. She has been treated by several therapists and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and is failing school as according to her latest report card, her grandmother said.

While Kirkland, who pays for Rolle's medical bills and a new private school, has received $6,997 amount from her GoFundMe campaign, and Rolle had been offered scholarships, she said she still faces a financial strain to mend her granddaughter's trauma. Rolle's mother, who lived in the Bahamas, returned to live with her daughter and Kirkland in Orlando to help aid her back to normalcy.

"I really and truly feel that had we not been a Black family, we would've had more help," Kirkland said. "We would have had a better opportunity to help Kaia through this a lot better and a lot faster."

'There's just a very disturbing trend.'

Amid mass protests after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and conversations around policing in schools, activists in Florida have been demanding officers' removal altogether. Their calls were amplified after two instances in January were captured on video and went viral.

Taylor Bracey, 16, was seen in a video getting body slammed by a school resource officer at Liberty High School in Kissimmee, Florida. The video was shared by local reporters and renowned national civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the family, on Twitter at the time. Like Rolle, Bracey's mother has publicly said that her daughter is traumatized and has suffered from side effects from the incident, including memory loss, headaches, and blurry vision.

At Eustis High School in Eustis, Florida, a 15-year-old girl was tased by a school resource officer. In the incident report obtained by Insider, an officer said that he was trying to break up an altercation between the teen and other students. The officer said the teen struck him multiple times while trying to restrain her, which led him to tase her, the report said. The teen had been charged for battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence, according to the incident report.

-Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) January 27, 2021

"I think that there's just a very disturbing trend, Tosh Pyakurya, 25, the state coordinator of Florida Power Student Network, told Insider. The Florida Power Student Network has been protesting and attending county school board meetings, calling for the end of the School Resource Officer program.

"It is important to recognize that this is part of a pattern. These aren't isolated incidents, this is part of a pattern of violence that Black girls have been experiencing for years. And it's something that many of us have been seeking to disrupt, and there are easy ways to disrupt it," Dr. Monique Morris, a notable social justice scholar and filmmaker, told Insider.

Research shows Black girls are more likely to be perceived as an adult compared to their white counterparts and face harsher punishments in school.

"It has to do with the adultification in that Black girl's experience," Morris said. "This way in which Black girl behaviors are read as provocative or dangerous or problematic when their counterparts of other racial, ethnic groups are not perceived this way. And a lot of that has to do with the historical tropes and stereotypes associated with Black girlhood that present a particular risk for Black girls."

According to Morris, one way to disrupt this pattern would be to include more practices in schools that "facilitate healing, that is not about adding more police officers to the school environment, but rather more clinicians, counselors, youth development workers that are about developing robust restorative approaches that can respond to young people who are in moments of conflict."

Kirkland's fight does not end with her granddaughter

In March, Kirkland testified before the Florida Senate Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs in support of a bill to prevent children under the age of seven from getting arrested. The Orlando Sentinel reported that there's no minimum age for arrests in Florida.

"I came to realize that situations like this predominately happen to children of color," Kirkland said. "And nobody was raising an alarm. Nobody was pushing any buttons."

The bill, named the Kaia Rolle Act, was sponsored by State Senator Randolph Brac and passed the Florida Senate on March 2.

It states, "A child younger than 7 years of age may not be adjudicated delinquent, arrested, or charged with a violation of law or a delinquent act on the basis of acts occurring before he or she reaches 7 years of age unless the violation of law is a 19 forcible felony."

Kirkland wants the age limit to be raised to at least 12.

"I fight because I have three grandchildren younger than Kaia. The thought of this happening again to people I know or people I don't know is just too much," she said.