Two Florida parents who are both high-ranking police officers are under investigation after admitting to putting their 3-year-old in jail because he was struggling with potty training.
Lt. Michael Schoenbrod of the Daytona Beach Shores Public Safety Department brought his son to jail on back-to-back days in October, placing him in handcuffs the second time, according to an interview captured on body-camera footage from a Volusia County sheriff’s deputy.
Schoenbrod told a caseworker at the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) that his fearful toddler promised he would not soil himself again.
“He was crying,” Schoenbrod said, according to body-cam footage obtained by The Washington Post. “I was getting the response I expected from him.”
Schoenbrod also acknowledged in the interview that he had disciplined another son in a similar way when the boy was 4, saying that taking the child to jail for acting out in preschool was “effective.”
The incident was first reported Wednesday by the Daytona Beach News-Journal, raisingquestions about whether Schoenbrod and the child’s mother, Det. Sgt. Jessica Long, faced any discipline from the Daytona Beach Shores Public Safety Department for placing the toddler in jail. The couple was told they were facing an internal professional standards investigation for their actions, but the findings of that inquiry have not been made public, the newspaper reported.
Schoenbrod, 45, and Long, 36, who live together, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning. During the interview with the caseworker, Long called the investigation into their potty-training response “insane.” Schoenbrod agreed.
“It’s just disgusting that somebody would drag our family through the mud like this,” he said, according to body-cam footage.
Neither Daytona Beach Shores Public Safety Director Michael Fowler nor Michael Lambert, the couple’s attorney, immediately responded to requests for comment. Fowler told the News-Journal this week that he had to consult with the city attorney before publicly commenting on the case.
Andrew Gant, a spokesman with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed to The Washington Post the veracity of the hour-long body-cam footage, most of which features scrambled video. Gant said that “the only role the Sheriff’s Office had in this case was providing a law enforcement escort to a DCF investigator during their interview of the parties involved.”
DCF spokeswoman Tori Cuddy told The Post that “the department conducts investigations concerning all allegations of abuse, neglect or abandonment.” DCF “is working with law enforcement, and all other information regarding investigations is confidential,” Cuddy added.
After The Post obtained the body-cam video, Gant later said that he was “made aware of a court order restricting release of records in this case” and deleted the files with the footage.
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Teaching a child to poop in a toilet has been a longtime source of frustration for parents. While many children show signs of being ready for potty training when they are between 18 months and 24 months old, some might not be ready until they are 3 years old, according to the Mayo Clinic. There’s also “no rush” in getting a child potty-trained, the academic medical center says.
“Let your child’s motivation, instead of your eagerness, lead the process,” Mayo Clinic staff wrote in “Potty training: How to get the job done.”
The group said that children’s caregivers should “keep in mind that accidents are inevitable and punishment has no role in the process.”
Schoenbrod told the caseworker that his child’s reaction to being punished by being placed in jail was what he had wanted.
“The whole time he was there, he was crying, he was upset,” Schoenbrod said. “There’s consequences for not following the rules.”
Schoenbrod said his child was just sitting in the jail, not handcuffed, and he denied that any poop was in the cell at the time. He said that whenever their son got in trouble, he and Long would take away the child’s four-wheeler and tablet.
Referring to potty-training his 3-year-old, Schoenbrod said: “Name something, I’ve tried it. When it comes to getting him to poop on the potty and discipline, I’ve tried it.”
In the footage, Schoenbrod recalled his teenageson and an experience from nine years earlier. When the older son was 4, Schoenbrod said, he admitted that he had hit a girl at preschool. In response, Schoenbrod took the boy to jail, where “daddy puts guys who hit girls.”
“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 that incident, he’s just like, ‘I would never do that again.’ It was effective. So that’s why I did it with [the younger son]. He didn’t hit anybody, but I figured the same thing — the discipline,” Schoenbrod said during the interview. “He didn’t want to go back” to jail.
At one point in the conversation with the caseworker, the couple referred to “Beyond Scared Straight,” the A&E series that profiled crime prevention programs aimed at deterring troubled teens from jail. They said their methods for potty training were nothing compared to what had been aired on television.
“I know we didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s just people getting it twisted,” Long said, according to body-cam footage. She added, “It’s just the definition of insanity.”
Schoenbrod praised his older son as an honor roll student. And he clarified that the 3-year-old son made good on his promise: He no longer had trouble pooping on the potty.
Timothy Bella is a staff writer and editor for the General Assignment team, focusing on national news. His work has appeared in outlets such as Esquire, the Atlantic, New York magazine and the Undefeated.
