US police bodycam video shows officers

berating child aged five BBC News

Published on 28 March 2021

The video, released on Friday by police in Maryland, shows the two officers telling the boy's
mother that she should "beat him".

Her lawyers allege that the child suffered emotional trauma.

The officers from Montgomery County Police Department had found the child a few streets
away from the school and the body camera video shows him crying in the back of a police car as
he is driven back.

The officers follow a member of staff and the boy into the school. A female officer is heard to
say, " that's why people need to beat their kids."

Inside the assistant head teacher’s office, the child begins to cry loudly and the video shows one
of the officers screaming directly into the boy's face.

"Shut that noise up now!" the officer says. "I hope your momma let me beat you."

Later the child's mother arrives at the school and the video shows both officers encouraging her
to hit her son.

"We want you to beat him," one officer tells her. The mother responds that she would be worried
about being sent to prison, but an officer responds: "You don't go to prison for beating your
child."

One officer then handcuffs the child in front of his mother, saying to the boy: "You know what
these are for? These are for people who don't know how to listen and don't know how to act."

The officer removes the handcuffs after about a minute.

Montgomery County Council member Will Jawando - who asked for the video to be released -
said the footage had made him "sick", the Washington Post reported.

"We all saw a little boy be mocked, degraded, put in the seat of a police car, screamed at from
the top of an adult police officer's lungs, inches from his face. This is violence," he said.

A statement from the Montgomery County school authority described the video as "extremely
difficult" to watch.

"There is no excuse for adults to ever speak to or threaten a child in this way," the statement said.
The Montgomery County Police Department said in a statement that the two officers had been
the subject of a "thorough" internal investigation, the findings of which had not been released.
They remain employed as sworn officers, the department said.

The statement said such investigations were considered confidential under Maryland law and it
would not comment on the findings.

The child's mother is suing Montgomery County, the two police officers, and the county's board
of education.

What I’ve learned from this?

As an adult we should show the good example to the next generation and especially the kids because in
every single action and step that we take and we do will affect the kid. As a five year old kid, he doesn’t
know anything yet, he is the stage of being annoying, naughty, playful, and sometimes didn’t listen to his
parents, so the best way to educate him was to talk to him nicely and trying to explain to him. This is
violence, we should avoid that because we will make the kid trauma.