A couple who work as police officers in Daytona Beach, Florida, put their toddler in a jail cell as a way of punishing the child for not being potty trained, according to a report.
The incident took place on consecutive days last October when Lt. Michael Schoenbrod and his spouse, Sgt. Jessica Long, both of the Daytona Beach Shores Police Department, brought their three-year-old son into the jail, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
The child was in handcuffs on the second day and said that he would never poop his pants again, according to an interview Lt. Schoenbrod did with a Department of Children and Families caseworker in Volusia County.
Lt. Schoenbrod and Sgt. Long are the focus of a professional standards investigation that’s taking place in the Volusia County court system, but the News-Journal wasn’t able to get access to records detailing the investigation’s progress or its results.
Both officers had 20 hours of leave without pay taken off their May pay stubs, per the newspaper.
Lt. Schoenbrod told investigators that he had used the jailing technique before with another son nearly 10 years earlier after his child hit a girl.
“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,” Lt. 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 …”
Audio from the meeting with child service workers picked up Sgt. Long calling the investigation “insane,” and Lt. Schoenbrod saying that it’s “just disgusting that somebody would drag our family through the mud like this.”
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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