Officers on Dec. 17 literally took a 14-year-old boy kicking and screaming from a home where he was staying with his older brother until a new foster home was found for him, according to an Athens-Clarke County police report made public this week.
The officers responded to the home on a request for assistance from a Department of Family and Children Services caseworker, who said the boy was in DFACS custody and was refusing to leave, according to the report.
The boy “kept saying that he was not going to another foster home and he did not understand why he could not stay there with his brother,” the report states.
The caseworker reportedly explained to police the brother was 19, and DFACS required there be at least a 10-year age difference between family members for them to be able to stay together.
When an officer told the boy he was going with the caseworker “whether he liked it or not,” the boy ran from the home and police said they were unable to find him after conducting a search. The boy later returned to the home where his brother was, and when officers again went there the boy still refused to go with the caseworker and said “he would kill himself to get out of going,” according to the police report.
After the boy resisted attempts to remove him from the home, officers fit him with a restraining device and carried him from the home, according to the report.
The boy was taken to Athens Regional Medical Center to have him checked for any possible injuries he sustained when struggling with officers, and he “continued crying the whole way to the hospital,” according to the report.
The officer who authored the report noted he remained at the hospital while staff started a medical evaluation, and “I turned him over to an evening shift unit when they arrived on scene.”