Mom Calls Police After Man Chokes Her 7-Year-Old, Police Arrest Her Instead

Yet another video of racism in the police force

A video that has come out of a white police officer arresting a black mother and her two daughters after her seven-year-old son was choked by a white man shows us all, yet again, the danger that black people face when they call the police in America — even if they are clearly the ones who are the victims.

On Wednesday, Jacqueline Craig’s seven-year-old son and one of her daughters came to her and said that a man at a nearby house had tried to choke him. When she confronted the man, he said that he put his hands around her child’s throat because the boy threw a piece of paper on the ground and refused to pick it up. Craig called the cops, because that’s what you do when someone tries to choke your second-grader, right? You call the cops. Your child has been hurt by a stranger, and the law should be on your side. But the truth is that if you’re black, calling the cops can be a risk to you no matter what the circumstances.

Craig’s 19-year-old daughter, Brea Hymond, was recording the scene on Facebook Live because, as we’ve seen in the past, if you’re black you could always use a few thousand witnesses when the cops are involved.

The video starts with the cop talking to the assailant while Hymond cautions her mother, “Don’t yell, Mama.” Don’t. Yell. This man just put his hands on her son, but Craig’s daughter knows that her mother can’t dare show any anger about it.

After talking to the man, the officer asks Craig, “What’s going on with you?” “My daughter and son came home, saying that this man grabbed him and choked him,” said Craig. “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.”

The officer’s response? “Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?”

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me.

To her credit, Craig still doesn’t lose her shit, and instead says, “He can’t prove to me that my son did or didn’t, but it doesn’t matter. That doesn’t give him the right to put his hands on him.”

Correct. What do you say to that, Officer?

“Why not?” The officer actually responded, “Why not?”

ARE. YOU. FUCKING. KIDDING. ME.

Now Craig is getting upset. She tells the officer that he has no idea what she teaches her kids, and that that’s beside the point because this man choked a seven-year-old boy.

Officer? “Why are you yelling?”

Craig tells him that she’s “pissed off” that he’s questioning her parenting and acting like there might be a justifiable reason for the other man to do what he did. He then warns her, “If you keep yelling at me, you’re going to piss me off and I’m going [to] take you to jail.”

At this point, Craig’s 15-year-old daughter steps in between the cop and her mother to try to diffuse the situation, and that’s when things go from bad to worse. The cop shoves the girl out of the way, throws Craig to the ground, and holds a taser to her back. Her daughters start screaming and weeping, so he points the taser at them, too.

He handcuffs Craig, handcuffs her 15-year-old, who is clearly terrified, and takes them both to his car. Meanwhile, Hymond is recording the whole thing, screaming, and telling the cop that he is on Facebook Live. Is she calling the cop names? Yes. Would I have done the same thing if he had thrown my mother to the ground and held a taser to her? You bet your sweet ass I would have.

But it never would have gotten there. Why? Because I’m a white woman living in the suburbs. The man who assaulted my son would have been arrested and that would have been that. And if you don’t think that is 100% the case, then you are kidding yourself.

In the end, the officer also arrests Hymond and takes her phone from her.

According to The Root, Craig and Hymond’s attorney, Lee Merritt, said that they were charged with “resisting arrest, interference with an officer, and failure to provide identification.” Bullshit, bullshit, and bullshit. The 15-year-old who so bravely tried to calm everyone down was not held because “it is illegal to hold a minor on nonfelony offenses.” Craig and Hymond were released yesterday and still plan to file charges against the man who attacked her son.

Because no report has been made about him, yet. Because he was free to go.

The Fort Worth Police Department has released a statement about the video saying that the officer involved has been placed on “restricted duty” and that they have launched an internal investigation into the incident.

In a news conference yesterday, Craig tearfully said that she felt she had failed her son. “It made me feel less of a parent that I couldn’t protect him when he needed it,” she said. But she tried. Unfortunately, she couldn’t protect herself from those she called for help.