A mother filed a lawsuit against two police officers after disturbing bodycam footage showed the pair handcuffing, threatening, and berating a 5-year-old child. This is hard to watch.
The Montgomery County Police Department faced a backlash after releasing the bodycam footage of an incident involving an unnamed 5-year-old boy who allegedly left school without permission, NBC News reports. The video contains disturbing content involving the detainment and castigation of the child by a pair of officers.
The video begins when police locate the missing child in a residential area. He had allegedly damaged a computer, attacked a teacher, and hit a classmate with a clipboard before fleeing the premises. The officer approaches the child and questions him before putting him into a patrol car and taking him back to the school. Once the boy is led to an office, a male and female officer use disturbing tactics to manage their young detainee.
As the child sobs, the officers berate and threaten him, telling him he is “bad” and deserves to be beaten. This causes the boy to wail uncontrollably, prompting the female officer to approach the child. After a school official re-enters the room, the female officer repeatedly screams at the top of her lungs just inches from the boy’s face.
“Shut that noise up!” the female officer yells before screaming at the sobbing child.
“Oh my god, I’d beat him so bad,” the female officer tells her colleague.
The pair continue to berate and threaten the boy with physical discipline before his mother arrives. The woman explains that she already spanks him, to which the officers urge her to go beyond spanking him and “beat him.”
“I spank him but I can’t discipline him how I want to discipline him because of this. I’m not losing my child to the system and I’m not going to prison,” the mother tells the officer. She then strips the child to show that “he’s not being physically abused.
“Who said he was?” the female officer asks.
“We believe it’s the exact opposite,” the male officer says.
“Yeah, we want you to beat him,” the female officer replies.
The officers, a school staff member, the mother, and the boy then move to a conference room to discuss the incident further. After some time, the male officer pulls out a pair of handcuffs and tightens them on one of the boy’s wrists as a scare tactic.
“You know what these are for? These are for people who don’t want to listen and don’t know how to act,” the officer says to the boy.
“I don’t like bad children. Bad, disrespectful children, I think they need to be beat,” the female officer says to the boy.
After releasing the cuffs from the child’s wrist, the officers direct legal advice toward the mother. They encourage her to amp up her physical discipline of the child, insinuating that as long as it doesn’t leave any visible mark, it isn’t child abuse.
“You can beat your child, just don’t leave no cuts or no crazy cigarette burns or nothing like that and we good,” the male officer says.
After watching the bodycam footage of her son’s interaction with the police, the mother filed a lawsuit against the police department, Montgomery County, and Montgomery County Public Schools for “compensation and justice” over the alleged abuse and threats toward her child.
A spokesperson for the Mongomery County Police Department confirmed that both officers were placed under an internal investigation. The department declined to comment further on the matter.
There is undeniably some deeper issue concerning the child’s behavior which neither physical discipline nor scare tactics will remedy. The angry and violent behavior isn’t normal for a child his age, and he is emotionally and mentally incapable of resolving it himself.
All of the adults in this situation failed this deeply disturbed child. As appalling as his behavior is, it has been overshadowed by the despicable actions of the adults. If these are the examples he has to guide him throughout his life, he and everyone around him are going to suffer.
Source: Tap Worthy Happenings
0 Comments