In recent years, we've seen a lot of disturbing footage come from police body cameras. But some newly released footage is so unsettling, it makes us wonder how something like this could ever happen. There are a few reasons that's true, but the most jarring is because it involves a child who is just 5 years old.
The footage is from January of last year, and it's around 51 minutes. In it, multiple officers can be seen and heard using intimidation tactics on a 5-year-old boy. The boy had wandered away from East Silver Spring Elementary School and did not want to return.
To say the officers went too far would be a drastic understatement. Not only did they scream at the child and call him names, at one point they even handcuffed the small child to scare him further.
Police misconduct is a serious problem. But when police officers treat small children so terribly, it's even harder to look away from. This case, while certainly not the first of its kind, is not so easy to ignore.
In the horrific video, the police are clearly trying to terrify the child. It makes little sense, because being confronted by the police when you are all but 5 years old is scary enough. Still, they proceeded to scream in his face and even advoctaed for people “beating their children.”
The officers still have jobs at the moment. But some people are calling for them to be fired. Councilmember Will Jawando wants the officers involved to be fired and investigated.
"You just see his body language is trembling because his face is blurred out obviously in the video, but the yelling in his face while administrators stood by … putting a handcuff on him, telling him he's gonna be in jail, just everything was wrong," Jawando said.
There is so much wrong with what takes place in the video. Some of the most shocking statements were a female officer asking the child if his mother spanks him. "Does your mother spank you? … She's going to spank you today. I'm going to ask her if I can do it," you can hear her say. Another officer tells the child that when he grows up, handcuffs are going to be his "best friend."
"These are for people who don't want to listen and don't know how to act," the officer says as he puts a handcuff on one of the child's wrists and places his hands behind his back. "Is that how you want to live your life?"
This would be a traumatic event for any child. That's what the family's lawsuit is now claiming. They filed in January. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and claims the child suffered "severe and extreme emotional distress" from the incident.
Not only is the lawsuit against the police officers involved, but also the county and the Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education. "Our client, Shanta Grant, brought this lawsuit on behalf of her then five-year old son in an effort to get justice and fair compensation for the trauma he endured. She also hopes that the incident will lead to changes in policy and training, both with the school and the police," Matthew Bennett and James Papirmeister, the lawyers who filed the lawsuit, told ABC News.
School administrators can be seen in certain parts of the video. But they didn't step in. Nothing was done to protect this child in his own school. While police corruption and misconduct is a widespread problem, the fact that school staff stood by and didn't intervene is perhaps even more shocking.
Board of Education President Brenda Wolff and Superintendent Jack Smith said in a statement, "Our heart aches for this student … There is no excuse for adults to ever speak to or threaten a child in this way."
It's inconceivable how this event could unfold the way it did, but it exposes deep problems within the Montgomery County Police Department, as well as issues within this child's school. On a larger scale, incidents like this point to an epidemic of systemic racism and show how Black children are often mistreated by the police, educators, and society as a whole, from an early age.
