Updated Thursday, Dec. 22, 3:00 a.m. EDT: Lee Merritt, attorney for Jacqueline Craig and Brea Hymond, is at the Fort Worth jail with his clients.
Earlier:
A video of a Fort Worth, Texas police officer antagonizing, assaulting, and ultimately arresting a black mother who reported an assault on her son is circulating on social media.
Scroll down for video.
After the police officer had a quiet exchange with the attacker, he strolled over to the mother, identified by family members on social media as Jacqueline Craig, and asked condescendingly, “What’s going on with you?”
“My daughter and son came home, saying that this man grabbed him and choked him,” Craig said as her daughter recorded. “I came around here and asked him. I said, ‘Why did you put your hands on my son?’ He said, ‘Oh, he threw some paper and I told him to pick it up.’ He said he defied him and that’s why he did it…you don’t have the right to choke somebody’s son. My son is 7-years-old, you don’t have the right to grab him and choke him.”
In response to Craig’s distress, the police officer asked in an accusing tone, “Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?”
“He can’t prove to me that he did or didn’t, but it doesn’t matter,” Craig said. “That doesn’t give him the right to put his hands on him.”
To which the officer responded, “Why not?”
Why. not.
See video below. Trigger Warning: Misogynoir; police brutality, white supremacist violence. The family has asked that this video be shared in hopes that the assaulting officer loses his job.
At this time, Craig, visibly upset told the officer that he didn’t know what she taught her children, made it clear that he was wrong for interrogating her instead of the man that assaulted her 7-year-old son.
The officer, pretending that he had not just insinuated that the white man had a right to assault her child, asked, “Why are you yelling?”
She explained that she was “pissed off” that he would even suggest that her son deserved to be assaulted and questioned her parenting skills, to which he responded, “If you keep yelling at me, you’re going to piss me off and I’m going take you to jail.”
When the woman’s daughter, identified by family on social media as Brea Hymond, attempted to get between her and the officer, he pushed her out of the way, grabbed Craig pushed her to the ground, pressed a Taser into her back, then pointed the Taser at her family.
The white man who assaulted the child stood by quietly as the police officer treated a group of black women, mother and daughters, like violent criminals.
The police officer eventually detained the person recording the assault and took her phone.
At the beginning of the video, you can hear Hymond say, “Don’t yell, mama.”
Even before the violence started, Hymond knew that any anger on her mother’s part would trigger state violence against her. And after the cop patronized and antagonized Craig—dismissing the violence against her son—he showed her that, for him, her son’s life didn’t matter, and neither did her life or the lives of her daughters. Just as the white man who assaulted a black child, this cop felt the need to show domination over black bodies.
This is one reason why so many Black people in this country hate the police. Nothing about this was necessary. It was a blatant show of power by a coward with gun who clearly gets off terrorizing black women and children.
There is no peace with that. Ever.
I called Fort Worth Police Department for a statement and the officer on duty said she didn’t know about the incident and the department didn’t have a statement.
Calls to their media department have not been returned.
Next Generation Action Network is also at the Fort Worth jail. The social justice organization has planned a police brutality protest. See details below.
More Stories
FBI Probes Racist Texts Sent to Black Americans After Trump Win – BET
Amazon Music & Black Music Collective Announce Fourth Annual 'Your Future Is Now' Scholarship Program For HBCU Students – The GRAMMYs
Racist text messages targeting Black community prompt emotional outcry – DC News Now | Washington, DC