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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People don't trust the police, or don't think reporting to the police is worth their time, or have other reasons to fear going to the police (like immigration status).
55% of non-lethal violent crimes go unreported, and 65% of property crimes.
Of those crimes that the police hear about or witness themselves, the percent that result in an arrest are below 20% for property crimes, and often below 50% for violent offenses... and that's after those low reporting rates.
That said, at the end of 2013, ~50% of all ppl aged 65+ in prison had been ADMITTED at age 55+ (only 50.4% of 65+ had served over 10 yrs), a much higher % than in the past (ie, in earlier studies a much greater % of those 65+ had been admitted when much younger).
This matters.
The US, at least, has a sizable cohort of older ppl who have not aged out of crime to the degree expected, and it’s not entirely clear why.
Some have tied it to life-long complications w elevated drug use in the 1960s-80s... tho that also implicates how we CHOSE to address that.
I realize that states really are passing new and tougher laws against protests these days, but I'm beginning to fear our coverage is focusing on the wrong aspects. Here are two examples, from OK and KY.
The CIVIL immunity piece is new, and important, but the criminal part tracks the pre-existing defensive force language pretty much exactly. I don't see how this adds anything new to OK law, just re-iterates it.
This happens a lot! What is "carjacking"? GTA + assault. Etc. etc.
Or in KY, we recently saw outrage over "can't insult cops" in a riot bill.
What that provision did was just codify SCOTUS's fighting-words exception, setting the standard for cops at a "reasonable person"... an issue on which SCOTUS is basically silent and state courts split.
* Crosses fingers, prays hard that no one says "but if you add up all the separate rates for the UK...."
** International comparisons always are merged jail-prison pops, since most places don't run separate pre- and post-systems. Which makes solid comparisons... tricky.
As a general matter, pre- and post-conviction measures shouldn't be added together, since pretrial is more about the flow in than the daily population.
That 639 rate for the US is based on the jail ave daily pop of 750K, not the annual admissions volume of 10,000,000.
You're a Good Samaritan. You bring some water bottles to a protest, both for people to drink, as well as to pour in people's eyes when the police launch tear gas that is banned in war but legal for domestic policies.
But you also know people might throw them.
Now, "knowing" is an important word here. Under the narrowest reading, you have to be practically certain (but not desire!) that they be used as a weapon.
A broader reading? You just have to be practically certain that they COULD be used as a weapon. Everyone meets this def.