Inset: Kyle Scott (Sumner County District Attorney General’s Office). Background: The Tennessee police department that Kyle Scott worked for when he did the “scared straight” intervention (Google Maps).
A Tennessee police officer handcuffed a sobbing 3-year-old boy and hauled him out of his home during a staged “scared straight” intervention, leading to a criminal conviction for the now-former cop.
Kyle Scott, 23, was found guilty on Thursday following a two-day trial in Sumner County, according to a district attorney general’s office press release. He was convicted by a jury of assault and attempted official oppression.
The case stemmed from a May 2025 incident in which Scott, then a Lawrenceburg Police Department officer, arrived at a home in uniform and pretended to arrest the young victim to frighten him into behaving.
Cellphone video captured the “intervention,” according to prosecutors. Scott can be seen wearing his “Lawrenceburg PD-issued service vest” at the time of the confrontation.
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“Scott … began to confront the victim as he screamed in terror at the sight of Scott, who proceeded to berate the victim for ‘destroying’ and ‘vandalizing’ ‘property’ in the home,” says District Attorney General Thomas Dean in his office’s press release, which was posted on Dean’s Facebook page.
“Though the victim promised that he would behave, Scott escalated the confrontation, eventually picking the victim up, putting him on his stomach, and placing handcuffs on the victim as he cried and begged to be released,” according to Dean.
Scott repeatedly “terrorized” and instructed the victim to “stop resisting” while placing the handcuffs on him, Dean says. Scott then picked the child up and walked out of the home with him, leading the victim to believe he was actually being arrested.
“As Scott left the apartment with the victim, the victim can be seen reaching and begging for his mother,” according to Dean, who noted that the child had been diagnosed with autism just months earlier.
The “intervention” was not a spontaneous police encounter, per the district attorney general, as detectives testified that Scott, his girlfriend and the boy’s mother had planned the entire ordeal to discipline the 3-year-old.
Scott was fired after the video of the intervention surfaced and indicted in July 2025. The victim was removed from his home by the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, according to Dean, and his mother was charged with child neglect and failure to report abuse; the other adults in the home at the time were charged with failure to report child abuse.
“Scott’s conduct was not only shocking and outrageous, but a disgraceful abuse of the authority and trust placed in him by the people of Lawrenceburg,” Dean said. “This innocent child should never have been subjected to such cruelty, intimidation, and humiliation, particularly at the hands of someone sworn to protect the public.”
Scott faces a potential sentence of 17 months and 29 days in jail, according to prosecutors. He is expected to be sentenced in 2027.
The post Little boy ‘cried and begged’ for his mother as cop hauled him away during ‘scared straight’ intervention — now it’s the officer and mom who are in trouble: DA first appeared on Law & Crime.
