While Nicole Walker fretted over the whereabouts of her arrested 16-year-old daughter Saturday, the Detroit teenager was confined to what she describes as an overcrowded, understaffed juvenile jail in Hamtramck that didn’t even have cups for water.
The teenager claims Wayne County authorities prevented her from calling her mom and left her alone in a cold jail where she witnessed juveniles getting abused.
“They took me away from my mother, and I didn’t have any connections to the outside world,” the girl tells Metro Times. “I felt like I was invisible and that no one cared about me. They don’t care about you. They’re evil. The whole building is unsafe.”
Detroit police arrested the teenager, whose name Metro Times isn’t disclosing because she’s a juvenile, on Friday afternoon on allegations that she pointed a gun at a group of people at a convenience store near her home on Detroit’s east side. Her mother says police refused to answer her questions and wouldn’t say where her daughter was going.
Detroit Police Commissioner Willie Burton helped the family file a complaint against police for their handling of the juvenile.
“Look at the stress they put on this family,” Burton tells Metro Times. “I think there is a lot to come out about this. Questions need to be asked. There needs to be oversight and accountability.”
According to the teenager, she was placed in a backroom at a police precinct office for three to four hours before being taken to the Detroit Juvenile Detention Center, which has come under fire for deplorable conditions and abusive staffers.
She says she wasn’t allowed to call her mother until Saturday evening — more than 30 hours after she was arrested. County officials confirmed she called her mom on Saturday and Tuesday.
The teenager says she witnessed staffers assaulting juveniles.
“When they tell you to go to your room, these big guys chase you around,” she says. “They will drag you, throw you, punch you. They are so bad there. It was crazy.”
She says the meals tasted like “dog food,” and the only drinks available were orange juice because the jail had run out of cups for water. If the juveniles wanted to drink water, they had to form cups with their hands to sip from the sink, she says.
“We were treated like animals,” she says, breaking down in tears. “I lost my mind. It’s crazy in there.”
Wayne County spokesperson Doda Lulgjuraj disputed claims that there were no cups for water.
“Our team says cups were and are still available in every pod,” Lulgjuraj tells Metro Times.
Meanwhile, the teenager says she’s “deathly scared” to go back to jail.
“I’m terrified,” she says. “Honestly, I would rather die than go back there. It’s a scary place.”
Her case is in front of a juvenile judge.
Last week, Metro Times launched “The Closer,” an investigative series about a former Detroit detective who terrorized teenagers to elicit false confessions and witness statements. In Part II, released this week, activists and attorneys call for a wholesale review of all the cases handled by the detective.
