By The Vanguard Staff
DAYTONA BEACH SHORES, Fla. – A 3½-year-old child with “potty training” challenges was jailed in the Daytona Beach Shores Public Safety Department two days in a row last October, according to a story in USA Today, noting, on one occasion, the child was also handcuffed.
“He was crying. I was getting the response I expected from him,” Lt. Michael Schoenbrod told the Department of Children and Families caseworker, body-cam footage from a Volusia County Sheriff’s Office deputy shows.
“The boy promised to never again poop his pants, Schoenbrod said, wrote USA Today.
USA Today said it was “unclear” if Schoenbrod and another high-ranking Daytona Beach Shores officer, Det. Sgt. Jessica Long, who brought the child to the jail, faced discipline from the city.
While the city has not made public any internal affairs findings, both Schoenbrod and Long had 20 hours of leave without pay on their May pay stubs. For the first six months of 2023, Schoenbrod took home $48,679, and Long made $47,754.
Schoenbrod admitted to the caseworker, said USA Today, that he has “used the put-a-child-in-jail technique before.” Nine years earlier, he said a 4-year-old boy misbehaving at preschool was similarly disciplined. Schoenbrod said he had asked the boy whether he had hit a girl and the boy said yes. So Schoenbrod then told the boy he puts people in jail when they hit other people.
“I took him to the jail and he sat there. And I watched him … and he was crying and everything, and to this day, if you mention, like, that incident, he’s just like, ‘I would never do that again.’ It was effective,” Schoenbrod said. “So that’s why I did it with this. He didn’t hit anybody, but I figured the same thing, discipline. And he didn’t want to go back, so …”
Later, on the hourlong body-cam footage, most of which contained scrambled video, Long could be heard calling the investigation “insane,” while Schoenbrod responded: “It’s just disgusting that somebody would drag our family through the mud like this.”
The Daytona Beach News-Journal, part of the USA TODAY network, obtained copies of memos written by Public Safety Director Michael Fowler to each informing them of a professional standards investigation.
But the results of any such investigation have not yet been made public, and Fowler said in an email he is consulting with the city attorney before commenting, according to the local newspaper that added “the actual records cannot be released because they have been sealed by a judge.”
“A public records advocate challenged the city officials’ assertion that the motion for confidentiality precludes them from making the internal-affairs documents public,” wrote USA Today.
“A pending motion to determine confidentiality of court records does not have any impact on the city’s IA (internal affairs) investigation,” Michael Barfield, director of public access initiatives for the Florida Center for Government Accountability, said, adding, “A party cannot make a record that is subject to production under Chapter 119 (of the state public records law) confidential by merely filing a lawsuit requesting confidentiality and then not setting a hearing on the motion.”
Barfield wrote that he believes the clerk’s attorney, in keeping court records filed by Schoenbrod and Long confidential, is being “cautious,” acknowledging the rule requiring the clerk to accept the request for confidentiality until the judge rules on the motion.
“However, that doesn’t make what the petitioner is doing legally correct,” Barfield said. “In my view, this is an abuse of the provision of that rule because the (Schoenbrod-Long) party knows the clerk will treat it as confidential until such time as a hearing is held.”
Schoenbrod and Long live together and have a child together. Neither they nor their attorney, Michael Lambert, responded to requests for comment, according to USA Today.
“A Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokeswoman said she received a June 6 News-Journal request for any investigation of Schoenbrod and Long agents may have completed and that the request has been forwarded to the public records department for processing, which is apparently ongoing,” said the USA Today story.
The newspaper noted On Feb. 4, Lonnie Groot, a Shores resident and the former city attorney, “requested documents related to any officer confining a child in a jail cell at the city’s Public Safety Building and investigations into ‘alleged child abuse by an officer’” with Daytona Beach Shores.
“I cannot imagine the City Commission tolerating and standing mute about a city employee bringing a child to City Hall and punishing the child in the City Commission chambers,” said Groot, according to USA Today. Groot added, “Why, then, does the City Commission act so meek, powerless and non-transparent as to this matter involving law enforcement officers?”
USA Today added, “Mark Dickinson, a former South Daytona police officer who now calls himself a civil-rights activist and goes by the Internet handle of James Madison Audits, requested the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office body-cam footage from the Division of Children and Families interview and posted it on YouTube in March.
“When he requested the findings of the professional standards investigation against Schoenbrod and Long, Dickinson said he was sent an estimate of $3,398.40—approximately 40 hours of work at $84.96 per hour—to review and redact the materials.”
“It’s a severe matter of public interest when you have strong allegations of that kind,” Dickinson said. “Rumors are being brought to you by fellow law enforcement … and you want to make sure the stuff they’re saying isn’t true,” the USA Today story noted.
