My son is 7-years old. He is an active child who does well in school ... likes to play football and basketball ... enjoys X-Box and Nintendo ... reads ... goes to birthday parties. It is inconceivable to me that the police would roll up on our block and place my son in handcuffs, take him to the local precinct, fingerprint and book him.Yet, that is what happened to a young boy in Baltimore MD earlier this week. The police say that he was illegally sitting on a dirt bike on the sidewalk.
Back in the day, the police would locate the parents of a wayward child, especially if the child was on his own block. They might put him in the squad car and drive him to his house. What are we coming to when 7-year old children are being placed into the criminal justice system?
In Miami, FL the police used a taser gun on a 6-year old boy at his school. In Cincinnati, OH the law says that a youngster can be shot with 50,000 volts of electricity from a taser gun. Efforts to raise the minimum age for this police action failed.
One common denominator for these cases? They each involved Black children. Why are we surprised that there is such a negative view of law enforcement in the African American community when we continue to see these examples of the lynching mentality that we're told went away many decades ago?
As the mother of the 7-year old child in Baltimore said, "This has changed his life,” she said. “He’ll never be the same."
