Police in Sacramento are facing an onslaught of backlash after recently surfaced video shows them arresting a 12-year-old black boy and placing a sack over his head.
The incident occurred in late April, but after a bystander’s video recently surfaced online, the city’s police department has just released a statement. The disturbing video shows officers handcuffing a 12-year-old black boy, pin him face down on the ground and place a sack over his head despite the young boy saying multiple times, “I can’t breathe.”
In the officer’s bodycam footage that was just released on Wednesday, an officer is seen running over to the unnamed boy who was being held by a man ― who wears a shirt for Wienerschnitzel hot dog company ― as another man, who police identified to HuffPost as a private security guard, stands by.
The officer instantly grabs the boy’s arms, pins him against a wall and starts to handcuff him.
“What am I under arrest for?” the boy asks at least seven times.
“He’s been having people buy shit for him over in the Walgreens,” says a voice that appears to be the guard’s. At another point a voice says the boy was “trespassing.”
Meanwhile, bystanders can be heard defending the young boy.
“He’s a little ass kid,” and “Call his parents, you can’t do that.” The boy repeatedly says “let me go,” and at one point says, “My parents should be here.”
After walking the child to the police car, the officer pins the boy face down on the ground. The boy calls the cops “racist” and mentions “police brutality.” One female officer holding him down at one point is heard saying, “He is just a little terrorist.”
A female officer asks for a “spit mask” while a third officer places the white sack over his head. Earlier in the video, the officer could be heard saying,
“That’s fucking it, he spit on me,” and the boy said, “Yeah, I spit on you.” “I can’t breathe,” the boy says multiple times, on the ground with the sack over his head. “Take this bag off my head,” he asks multiple times, as the cops put him in the back of their car, the bag still over his head.
The boy was later released to his mother and charged for battery against a police officer and resisting arrest. Despite the disturbing video, Sacramento police told HuffPost they are not conducting an investigation into the officers involved.
“Our officers involved in this incident appropriately used a spit mask to protect themselves and defuse the situation,” police chief Daniel Hahn said in the release. “I am grateful that our officers were willing to proactively intervene when they observed suspicious activity, and that nobody was injured during this encounter.”
“The kid’s a good kid,” Mark Harris, an attorney representing the boy and his family, told The Sacramento Bee. The family plans to file a lawsuit against the police. “He’s a small, slight kid, he’s under 4-foot-8 and he weighs less than 80 pounds … He’s a little bitty kid. None of this should have come down the way it did.”
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