A shocking video has surfaced showing police officers arresting an eight-year-old boy at school and telling him that he’s going to jail.
According to reports, the young boy – who is said to have special needs – is alleged to have hit a teacher in the chest.
Disturbing body-cam footage from December 14, 2018 shows two officers at Gerald Adams Elementary School in Key West, Florida, frisking him and attempting to put him in handcuffs, though his wrists are too small for them.
The Daily Mirror say the video clip was shared by attorney Ben Crump, who is also representing the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.
In the footage, one of the officers can be heard telling the eight-year-old: “You’re going to jail. So you need to stand up and put your hands behind your back.”
Mr Crump tweeted to say that the incident was “unbelievable”, describing his client as being so small that “the cuffs fell off his wrists”.
He said the arrest was an example of “scared straight tactics” sometimes employed by officers in schools, wherein juveniles are briefly placed in an adult prison to try and scare them away from committing future crimes.
The video shows a teacher comforting the crying boy as he’s taken from the school and led out to a police car. An officer told him:
“You understand this is very serious okay and I hate that you put me in this position and I have to do this.
“The thing about it is that you made a mistake and you have to learn from it and grow from it and not repeat the same mistake again.”
The arrest report states that the boy had become involved in an incident when a teacher told him to sit properly in his chair in the cafeteria. It adds that he warned her not to touch him, before lashing out.
I’m not sure how I feel about this to be honest. On the one hand I can see the value of children learning their rights from their wrongs early on, so as to avoid the possibility of them committing greater crimes when they grow up, but in this incident perhaps the cops were too heavy handed.
What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments box.
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