A group of activists watched Monday as a judge extended the temporary restraining order against a Baton Rouge police officer accused of strip searching and groping an 11-year-old boy at the narcotics processing facility that’s notoriously come to be known as the “BRAVE Cave.”
Joseph Carboni must continue to comply with a protective order that bars him from serving as a school resource officer at the Baton Rouge school the child attends. Carboni provided off-duty support at the charter school until last month when officials severed ties with him after learning of the misconduct allegations.
Attorneys agreed to postpone an evidentiary hearing until April 16, when they will argue whether the injunction should be permanent.
Carboni did not attend Monday’s hearing, but more than a dozen members of several local community groups and faith-based organizations sat in the courtroom. The groups gathered outside the courthouse before the proceedings to stage a prayer vigil and press briefing, calling for better screening measures for school resource officers patrolling East Baton Rouge campuses and classrooms.
Rev. Alexis Anderson, a member of the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition, said Monday’s show of solidarity was about establishing well-defined standards in a convoluted system that includes private, parochial, charter and public schools.
“Our children deserve protection,” she said outside the courtroom after the hearing. “You can’t work in a nursing home without having a background check. You cannot work in a nursery school with a background check. It is not acceptable for any school board not to have a very specific policy that requires any adult that’s brought into spaces with children have the same type of vetting that their paraprofessionals…janitorial staffs, everybody has to have.”
Carboni is named in a federal lawsuit filed last month that alleges he and fellow officers beat, tased and illegally strip searched Lakeisha Varnado and her three juvenile sons after executing a search warrant at the family’s Aster Street home early the morning of June 6.
According to the Feb. 20 filing, Carboni stripped Varnado down and performed a full-body cavity search of her when the family was taken to the BRAVE Cave following the raid. Nearly two hours later, he took the 11-year-old boy to the bathroom and forced him to strip naked. He then groped the child’s genitals while strip searching him, the federal complaint alleges.
A pair of psychiatrists at the LSU Health Science Center in New Orleans reviewed video footage of the ordeal and conducted a forensic interview on the boy in December. During the interview, he told the doctors that Carboni — who he identified as the “officer with a white beard” — is frequently stationed at IDEA Bridge, the Baton Rouge charter school he attends.
Noting that he’d seen Carboni at his school numerous times since the June raid, the child reported “ongoing fears” of retaliation and more police harassment, according to the injunction petition.
“I just keep thinking, like, what if it happens again,” the boy told the psychiatrists, according to the lawsuit. “The man who sexually assaulted me works at my school. I have to see him every day.”
District Judge William “Will” Jorden granted a temporary restraining order Feb. 20 that prohibited Carboni from going within 100 feet of the boy. It also barred the officer from working as a school resource officer or attending campus events at IDEA Bridge.
Carboni provided off-duty support until last month, when IDEA Bridge officials severed ties with him after learning of the misconduct allegations.
BRPD confirmed an internal investigation into the sexual battery allegations last month after Varnado filed a complaint with the department. A police spokesman on Monday said Carboni has not been charged criminally or disciplined as a result of the complaint.
The allegations against Carboni are the latest in a string of federal claims accusing officers with the now-disbanded Street Crimes Unit of using excessive force and conducting illegal strip searches on detainees at the unmarked warehouse. The narcotics facility off Plank Road has been shut down and is now being investigated by the FBI.
Carboni was also named as a defendant in the Aug. 29 federal lawsuit that first brought the BRAVE Cave allegations to light. In that case, a 23-year-old man named Jeremy Lee accused Carboni and two other officers of strip searching and severely beating him inside the processing facility that attorneys described in the complaint as a “torture warehouse.” Afterward, Lee was hospitalized with a fractured rib, chest and facial pain and breathing difficulties, according to the filing.
Varnado and Tredonovan Raby, the 11-year-old’s father, filed for the injunction on their son’s behalf. Ryan Thompson, their Baton Rouge attorney, stood outside the courthouse with local advocates during Monday’s vigil. He said police executed a dangerous “no-knock” warrant when they burst through the family’s front doors and windows last June. He also noted that no police video is available from the family’s encounters with officers inside the Plank Road warehouse.
“What happened in the BRAVE Cave is something I don’t think any citizen should be subjected to,” Thompson said. “We’re here today to put our petition before the courts that we believe there will be irreparable harm done to this 11 year old if the permanent restraining order is not put in place for good.”