Montgomery County, Maryland, leaders are expressing strong opinions about the newly released video of two Montgomery County Police Department officers shouting and handcuffing a 5-year-old boy who left school and did not want to return.
Leaders in Montgomery County, Maryland, are expressing strong opinions about the newly released video of two Montgomery County Police Department officers shouting and handcuffing a 5-year-old boy who left school and did not want to return.
The video
The nearly hour-long video shows camera images of the body of two African American police officers – a man and a woman – interacting with a 5-year-old African American boy who left East Silver Spring Elementary School and refused to return on January 14, 2020.
In the video, school officials explain to police officers that he allegedly threw a basketball at an instructor and knocked over a computer before leaving school.
A school official contacted the police and asked for his help. In less than two minutes of filming, the policeman is heard shouting at the boy.
“I don’t care if you don’t want to go to school – you don’t have that choice, do you understand?” the policeman tells the boy, before he changes to a more aggressive tone. “Get back there! Now!”
When the boy doesn’t respond immediately, the policeman grabs him by the arm and starts to take him back to school. The boy starts coughing and crying hysterically, and the police scold him.
“There is no crying!” the police officer yells at the boy.
The policeman, who holds the boy by the arm, says: “Stop it!”
Warning: some viewers may find the video disturbing
The boy is then placed in the back of a police vehicle. The police officer asks, “Does your mother hit you?” and the other officer replies, “Probably not.” The police officer then says, “She is going to hit you today – I am going to ask her if I can do this.”
Back at school, the child continues to cry loudly. The police officer is seen entering his face and shouting loudly at him, apparently mocking his sobs.
When the boy’s mother arrives, she tells the police that she does not hit the child because it is against the law and that she did not want to lose him to the system.
She then takes off the boy’s shirt to prove to the police that he was not being physically abused at home. Male police officers tell her “we believe it is the exact opposite”. The police officer said, “We want you to hit him.”
The police officer then tells the mother that she cannot use a gun to hit him, but “you can hit that ass, over and over.”
Later, the policemen, the boy and his mother enter a conference room, where the policeman cuffs one of the boy’s arms and tells him: “When you get older and want to make your own decisions, you know what your going to be best friend? ”And lifts the handcuffs. “These here – do you know what they are? These are handcuffs. “
He adds: “These are for people who do not want to listen and do not know how to act”.
The police then remove the handcuffs and discuss the boy’s behavior with his mother.
The boy’s mother, Shanta Grant, filed a lawsuit against the Montgomery County public school system and the county police department over the incident.
The police department said that after the complaint was filed, an internal investigation was carried out on the matter. They did not release the findings of the investigation, saying all internal affairs are confidential under Maryland law, but both officers are still employed by the Montgomery County Police Department.
Montgomery County Public Schools said they could not fully comment on the incident because of the pending litigation, but offered their condolences for the boy in the video.
“It was extremely difficult for us to watch the video of the incident involving a 5-year-old student at East Silver Spring Elementary School. Our heart hurts for this student. There is no excuse for adults to speak or threaten a child in this way, ”says the statement.
The school system also said it expects school staff to “follow the structures designed for student intervention and support, as well as school security”
Community leaders react
Montgomery County Council member Will Jawando, an outspoken advocate of police reform and a critic of police involvement within schools, told WTOP that the incident showed “a complete failure of our system”.
“You just have to be horrified – horrified and, frankly, disgusted – with the failures of several adults, various systems – the school system, the police department – to protect this child, who is in kindergarten, a child of 5 years that he wandered away and was scolded for almost an hour, ”said Jawando. “Handcuffed and called ‘nasty’, and yelled, yelled at. He is crying. “
Jawando added: “No one should be treated this way, much less a 5-year-old child … who has not been able to endure this type of abuse in terms of development.”
Jawando once again called for a review of the municipality’s public security and policing system. He said police officers should not be in schools or be primarily responsible for incidents like what happened in January 2020.
He said the video provides an excellent example of the “school-to-prison pipeline”.
“Almost from the beginning – it happens 30 seconds after the interaction and you can see (the boy is) scared about his life,” he said. “But then it becomes a negative interaction, based on law enforcement and frankly … cruel.”
Jawando said that black boys are often seen as older, more dangerous and less innocent than children of other ethnicities. He said the treatment is on full display in the video.
“This is certainly what happened here – to the point of ‘you’re going to end up in prison … let me show you, at the age of 5, what it’s like to put handcuffs on you and what’s in your future'” he said. “If this isn’t the school’s prison channel, I don’t know what is.”
He also said that the race of officers does not matter in incidents like this.
“Prejudices … based on white supremacy and criminalization and the stereotypes that accompany black and brown children in particular have permeated everyone and no one is immune to them,” he said.
Council member Nancy Navarro said accountability was necessary and that the footage should have been made available earlier.
“This council should have received this footage and should have had a lot of time and we have been asking for it, so this is also a real concern regarding how the government handled this particular footage,” she said. “As a mother, and also as a resident of this municipality, this leaves a lot to be desired.”
In a joint statement released on Friday, the council said it had asked county executive Marc Elrich for access to the body camera images repeatedly, but only had access at the same time it was made available to the public.
“We also believe that our community deserves to hear directly from our County Executive about what actions the administration plans to take to ensure that a situation like this never happens again.”