Black Young Kids are Being Handcuffed and Traumatized by Police Officers

Why not treat the Black kids like the guilty white kids are treated.

This is one article that I wished I did not have to write to bring to the public’s attention how the law enforcement around the country are treating Black kids as young as six years old like criminals without provocation. Over an 11 year period of data being collected, it has shown a great disparity in the manner in which Black kids are treated compared to other kids.

There was one incident where the Chicago police kicked down a family’s front door of their home and ordered this kid who was 7 years old at the time to get down on the floor with his two siblings, as they were looking for drug suspects.

Looking for drug suspects is no reason to treat these young kids like criminals this behavior should not be tolerated in the police department or society but both entities permit it and turn their heads when frowned upon.

Another Chicago incident was an 8-year-old kid was handcuffed, led outside into the cold March darkness with his arms raised facing a wall of police officers pointing their guns, and was handcuffed for nearly 30 minutes alongside his mother and other adults. Then a police sergeant released him. This kid nor his family members were arrested as the police flashed a warrant to look for illegal weapons, and found none.

Over an 11 year period, data was collected and had shown that Black children as young as 6 had been treated harshly and even brutally by law enforcement. Some Black kids had been handcuffed, felled by stun guns, taken down, and pinned to the ground by officers much physically stronger and bigger than the children they apprehended.

According to the collected data over an eleven-year period from 25 police departments in 17 states, there have been 3,000 instances of police use of force against Black young children.

Scary, Black children represent 15% of the U.S. child population but make up more than 50% of those mishandled by law enforcement. These Black kids have been subjected to takedowns, strikes, muscling, firearms pointed at them or used on them, pepper spray, and pinned down with the officer’s body weight or police dogs.

In Minneapolis, police officers pinned 190 Black children down with their body weight; in Indianapolis, 160 Black kids were handcuffed; in Wichita, Kansas, officers drew or used their Tasers on Black kids at least 45 times. While the majority of these kids were Black teenagers, there were some children as young as 10 or younger who were subjected to brutality at the hands of the police.

Oftentimes, when situations occur involving Black teenagers or young children, the police lacks ability, untrainedness, misjudgment in handling situations pertaining to Black kids often is the culprit that escalates many situation to mayhem.

Another incident in Chicago South Side, three children were in their home when two police officers on two occasions 11 weeks apart kicked opened their door and tore apart the cabinets and dressers searching for drugs and suspects.

The people the police sought, were not familiar to this family. These children ranged in ages from 14, 11, and 7 who were ordered to get down on the floor in their own home. Two of the kids were frightened as the police put his foot on one of the siblings’ back as they were treated like criminals.

Two of these families have sued the Chicago police, alleging false arrest, irresponsible conduct, and emotional distress. According to their attorneys, there is a pattern and a specific brand of force that falls disproportionately on poor families of color.

There was another incident where a 15-year-old mentally disabled boy was riding his bike near his house when he ran afoul of an ordinance that prohibited biking and skateboarding in the business district, a law that was rarely enforced, if ever.

This mentally disabled child conveyed to his dad that the police officers followed him in their squad car and chased his bike up over a curb and across the grass. The police pursued this mentally disabled child into his home and threw him to the floor, handcuffed him, and slammed him against a wall. The father arrived home just in time to see his son heading toward the police squad car with a look of sheer terror on his face. The dad tried to explain that his son is just a kid riding a bike down the road.

Thank God there were surveillance cameras outside the Police Department and this family has filed a federal lawsuit against the officers. Two officers received written warnings and that is the end of their story.

Another incident occurred in San Fernando at 10 PM at night, fireworks were being heard, supposedly, and there were Black boys walking through a park with their older brother and his dog. The officers followed these Balck boys and told them it was past curfew and they needed to take the boys into custody.

According to the police, the boys were responsible for the ruckus as they charged them with resisting arrest, later a cellphone video surfaced that was taken by one of the brothers told another story.

The video actually showed an officer forcing the 14-year old brother to the ground and handcuffing him, his 13-year old friend struggled to get next to him, his neck and shoulders were pinned down by the officer’s knee for 20 seconds as he screamed, ““Get off of my neck! That’s too hard!”

During a bench trial, the judge found the boys not guilty. Their family is suing the city and the police officer. San Fernando has denied in the past that officers used excessive force maintaining that the boys physically resisted arrest.

If this is a fact, what about the evidence in the video? Are they in denial or just straight out racist and will go the mile to protect bad cops? Even the judge found the kids innocent, does San Fernando see that the city and the police department is tare problem and not the kids.

The American Psychological Association published a study that described how Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed with the same “childhood innocence” as white boys and are more like to be considered guilty and face police violence. The same holds true for young Black girls.

In another incident, last year, a13-year-old girl went to the skating rink with a friend in a mostly white town outside of Akron, Ohio. A few Black teens were present, a fight broke out, the 13-year-old was in the bathroom, was grabbed by an officer, handcuffed, and thrown into the back of a police car. Another family files a lawsuit and rightfully so.

In conclusion, Black kids’ perception of police officers is negative and they represent fear because these cops have traumatized these Black kids because they are Black and they can get away with it.

There is nothing positive about Black children’s experiences with these racist police officers where they have been subjected without warrant to the wrath of these officers because of the color of their skin. Black children see the difference in their treatment by the police officers compared to the treatment of white kids, bad and good ones.

Having these types of negative experiences with the police officers, Black children react negatively because that is the truth of what the police uniform represents and that’s all they know about the police officers is what they have been subjected to and what they have seen, no more, no less.

Apparently, there is no federal or nationwide policy in place mandating the age that a child should not be handcuffed and subjected to excessive force without provocation with police officers. The bottom line is these are children and should be treated like children unless there is a crime. White kids are not subjected to such mental and physical cruelty by police officers, so do the same for the Black kids.

There is evidence that the Cincinnati police used stun guns against 48 children age 15 or younger from 2013 to 2018. All were Black except two.

In another incident, Aurora, Colorado, a video showed the police handcuffing Black girls ages 6, 12, 14, and 17 facedown in a parking lot which was shown on national television. The youngest girl sobbed and her sister begged the police if she could hug her sister while she was crying. Their mother was taking them to a nail salon and the police stopped her because they believed she was driving a stolen car and as it turned out she was not. The stolen car the police were looking for had Montana plates and this lady’s car had Colorado plates. Of course, she is suing also.

Again, the police again get away with traumatizing another Black family with young kids, they did not face any criminal charges, remained on duty, and no policy changes have been implemented for handcuffing her kids. This family filed a lawsuit.

In conclusion, the police departments around the country need to clean house, and glean out all of its bad elements from the top to the bottom and policy needs to be implemented by local and state officials to thwart and get rid of this degrading behavior of Black children at the hands of police officers nationwide having ill-will, and racist attitudes toward Black children and adults.

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