Texas teen who recorded violent arrests of mom sister said she was afraid cop would shoot
Texas teen who recorded violent arrests of mom sister said she was afraid cop would shoot:- The black Texas teenager who recorded video of a white officer violently arresting her little sister and mom said she was scared for her life and wanted to document the altercation in case the cop pulled out his gun.
“We see police kill people every day on video. And that could have easily been my mother, myself or my 15-year-old sister,” Brea Hymond, 19, said at a news conference Thursday, a day after she was arrested alongside her mother and sister.
She continued: “That’s why I felt that there was a need to record it — because that could have been anybody.”
The unidentified Fort Worth officer wrestled with the three women and took them into custody Wednesday after mom Jacqueline Craig called for help: One of her white neighbors had choked her 7-year-old son, she said, and she wanted police to investigate the alleged abuse.
Craig’s attorney, S. Lee Merritt, said “racism is all over” the case.
“If this was a white child who had been choked by a black man, there’s no way on God’s green Earth that they would be walking free and that the mother of that child would have been arrested along with this child’s siblings,” he said, according to NBC News.
Craig, 46, said she thought she was helping her son when she called police for help.
“It made me feel less of a parent — that I couldn’t protect him when he needed it,” she said during the press conference as she broke into tears. “I’m very distraught because what I felt I was doing was actually protecting my child, and it didn’t happen.”
The officer was put on restricted duty after Hymond’s footage went viral. The Fort Worth Police Department is investigating the video.
Craig said she called police because one of her neighbors “grabbed and choked” her 7-year-old son for littering. The teen’s Facebook live video begins after the cop is already on the scene, speaking to the neighbor in question.
The man told the officer that the 7-year-old boy left litter on the ground and refused to pick it up despite his requests.
“Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?” the officer asked Craig. The mom responded that regardless of whether the boy littered, the man did not have the right to “put his hands on him.”
“Why not?” the officer asked.
The exchange got more heated between the cop and the mom, and Craig’s 15-year-old daughter tried to step between them to diffuse the situation. The officer grabbed the teen — and then wrestled Craig to the ground.
During the scuffle, the officer pulled out his stun gun and pointed it at the mother and daughters, the video showed.
The cop eventually took all three into custody, and Craig was booked on resisting arrest charges and outstanding traffic warrants.
Merritt said all of the charges were “completely made up just to justify the unlawful arrest.” The mom and daughters were released on bond Thursday.
Police said in their statement that they have reviewed the officer’s body camera footage, but will not be releasing it or many other details because state law regarding internal investigations doesn’t allow them to do so.
“We acknowledge that the initial appearance of the video may raise serious questions,” the police statement said. “We ask that our investigators are given the time and opportunity to thoroughly examine this incident and to submit their findings.”
Source:- http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-teen-recorded-violent-arrests-mom-sister-speaks-article-1.2921532
