Plain Old Justice

Officer Verbally Abuses 5-Year-Old

By K. W. Locke

     Add another case to your list of instances when a police officer acted inappropriately in dealing with a child.

    In an earlier post, I described a troubling incident in Rochester, New York.  Police there pepper-sprayed and handcuffed a 9-year-old girl   The police union's president shrugged it off, saying "there's a good chance she could have been hurt worse."

    That same blog post also discussed Aurora, Colorado police making a 6-year-old girl, and two teenage girls, lie flat on their stomachs on the pavement.  The cops handcuffed the teenagers, but the 6-year-old's wrists were too small.

    Now, there has been another ugly instance, this time involving two police officers in Montgomery County, Maryland.  You can watch bodycam video of one of the cops threatening a 5-year-old boy with beating.

    The boy had acted up in class and walked away from school.  At one point, after the boy started crying, the officer said:

Shut that noise up! You shut that noise up now! Boy, I tell you, I hope your mama let me beat you. I swear to you. I'm gonna [? wig ?] out.

If the cop treats kindergarten-aged children like this, what does he feel free to do to older people?

    Is the officer's behavior an early warning sign of the harm he might do in the future?  

 

 

Banner photograph of child by Arwan Sutanto (via Unsplash).