Georgia Cops Leave 13-Year-Old Boy in Patrol Cruiser to Freeze

This time, officers locked a 13-year-old boy in the back of a patrol cruiser, with the windows rolled down in freezing temperatures, to get him to offer them accurate information about his identity and his family.

The incident happened on January 2, at around 1 am, when they caught the teen driving in a golf cart on the public road, down Alpharetta Highway. Officer C. Dickerson stopped the boy and tried to get him to talk, to find out where he’d gotten the golf cart from and where he was heading.

During the 40 minutes she questioned him, his story changed several times. The original one was that his mother had let him borrow the golf cart to go down to Starbucks in the middle of the night, but he quickly discarded it when he was asked to give his mother’s name and address.

Dickerson noticed the boy’s backpack and dirt on his knees, and believed he might have stolen the golf cart. She also thought he’d been out robbing houses.

Sergeant Daniel Elzey also came on the scene and, informed that the boy had already changed his story several times, he decided to lock him in the police car. Temperatures that night were between 12 and 18 degrees, so Elzey rolled down the windows and killed the engine, making sure the boy would come clean with all the information when he got too cold to sit in the car anymore.

Elzey also taunted the boy until he got him to talk. He eventually gave his real name and his mother’s home address, and was released into her custody. She told the officers that he’d caused trouble before.

The police report included no mention of the minutes the boy spent handcuffed in the police car, with the windows open, in the freezing temperatures. Elzey is no on paid administrative leave, while the incident is under investigation.