I am not easily shocked. I get nervous, sometimes, at how insured I feel abt the persistent violence I study.
This article, about how two police officers terrorized a FIVE YEAR OLD BOY, shocked me.
I've rarely put trigger warnings on my threads, but...
washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…
The boy left school. So the school CALLED THE COPS.
Where did the cops find him? ONE BLOCK FROM SCHOOL.
He wasn't missing. He was ONE. BLOCK. AWAY.
This is the unnecessary start. Calling the cops. On this.
The cop immediately starts berating the boy. The five year old boy.
A FIVE YEAR OLD WHO KNEW TO BE AFRAID HE COULD GO TO JAIL.
Just... sit with that for a moment. Not just that it could happen. But that a five year KNEW TO FEAR IT.
FIVE. HE'S FIVE.
I mean, God damnit. FIVE.
What comes next is an absolute barrage of dehumanizing behavior.
Again, he's FIVE.
Crate him. Beat him. Expel him.
COPS. Told his mother. TO BEAT HIM.
THEY CUFFED HIM. CUFFED.
HE.
IS.
FIVE.
Yeah, obviously.
Basic humanity should have been enough.
Yeah, obviously.
HE IS FIVE.
He was yelled at by cop. Threatened w beatings, heard his mother get told to beat him, heard a cop say he should go in crate because he was "a beast." Handcuffed.
I'M going to have nightmares having just read this, and I'm 45.
Not FIVE.
I mean, this behavior was so bad that even the union said it things "should have been handled better"...
... though "by all involved," which: no. The FIVE YEAR BOY did nothing meriting this.
Also, you need special training to... not do this? No. You don't.
Again: FIVE.
The end result?
Nothing. "Thoroughly" investigated, but kept their jobs.
Who wouldn't get fired for doing this?
No accountability at all.
For doing all this.
To a FIVE YEAR OLD BOY.
Just... revolting.
That last part--about the lack of any accountability--should silence any effort to invoke "... but a few bad apples."
If you can investigate this and keep the officers on the force, the problem is systemic.
(Like the dept in WV that fired the cop for NOT shooting someone.)
In a field defined by horrific outcomes every day, the trauma inflicted so cruelly on a FIVE YEAR OLD BOY stands out for its horrificness.
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