She is pregnant. She was holding her 1-year-old baby in her arms. Her 4-year-old daughter was with her in the back seat of the car, too. And the Phoenix police officer in this video was screaming, SCREAMING at her, "I'M GONNA PUT A CAP IN YOUR F*CKING HEAD! GET YOUR HANDS UP!"
She's pleading with them, telling them her car door doesn't work, she tells them it doesn't open, she promises it doesn't open, and he screams at her, gun pointing at her and her babies, "YOU'RE GONNA F*CKING GET SHOT! GET YOUR F*CKING HANDS UP!"
She's begging them not to point the gun at her kids. She's crying. A second police officer comes with his gun drawn, pointing it at the pregnant Black woman with her baby and toddler defenseless in the back seat of a car with a faulty door, screaming obscenities at her. When she finally makes it out the other door with her children, the cop demands she put the baby down on the hot Arizona pavement. "She can't walk!" the mother protests...so what does the cop do? He yanks that baby's arm to try to take them out of their mother's arms, and now the baby has an injury called a "dead arm."
That's just what they did to the mother and the babies. You needn't have a vivid imagination to picture what they do to the father. In fact, you needn't have an imagination at all. Just watch the recording from a bystander. Listen to that father's calm, motivated by outright terror, no doubt, in the face of the unhinged racist rage of the police officer.
What's this all about? Allegedly, their 4-year-old took a doll from the Dollar Store where they'd just been shopping, but the parents hadn't noticed. Mind you, the employees at the Dollar Store didn't notice, either, nor did they call the police. Apparently, it was an "anonymous alleged witness" who notified police. OH, REALLY?
We know what this is really about.
The family is suing the police officer individually, the police department, and the City of Phoenix for $10 million dollars. (You can read the complaint here.) If there were justice, they'd be awarded ten times that amount, at the very least. If there were justice, those cops would get fired, charged with hate crimes, and convicted. Hand to god, every day that goes by that Black people don't burn this country to the ground is a goddamned miracle, and as long as white cops are little more than armed professional Klansmen, it's a miracle we don't deserve.
