http://www.fox4news.com/news/225061979-story
The video was posted on Facebook Wednesday evening and has already been nearly one million times. It shows a woman named Jacqueline Craig explaining to an officer that she called police because her neighbor had tried to choke her young son for littering. The officer involved has been placed on restricted duty but has not been suspended or put on leave.
“My son is 7 years old. You don’t have the right to grab him, choke him for no paper that he threw. What you should have done because we have been living here for years so you know my house is a door in between yours. So you could have came to me. You don’t put your hands on my son,” Craig explains to the officer.
“Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?” the officer replies.
“He can’t prove to me that my son littered,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter if he did or didn’t. He didn’t have to put his hands on him.”
“Why not?” the officer asked.
The confrontation escalated after Craig gets upset about the officer questioning her ability to raise her children. The officer then threatens to arrest her for yelling at him.
Craig’s daughter steps between them to push her mother away, and that’s when the officer pulls out his stun gun, takes Craig to the ground and handcuffs her.
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Police records show the 46-year-old mother and her two teenage daughters were arrested. But the officer never took the initial police report about choking incident, and the man who allegedly assaulted Craig's son was not arrested.
Craig apparently had outstanding warrants for traffic violations in Irving. She was held at the Mansfield jail for those charges, as well as charges of resisting arrest and failing to identify as a fugitive. Her bond was set at $5,901.90.
Her 19-year-old daughter, Brea Hymond, who was behind the video, was also jailed for resisting arrest and interfering with public duties. Both Craig and Hymond were released from jail on Thursday afternoon. The third person arrested is a juvenile. She was released with misdemeanor charges.
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The family’s lawyer, Lee Merritt, says what happened was racism and demanded the officer be fired and Craig’s charges dropped.
"First, we would like to see the official report regarding the initial assault. Obviously, we want to see that officer removed from the force, fired and prosecuted,” Merritt said. “We want to see the original person tried and prosecuted.”
"I’m very distraught because what I felt I was doing was protecting my child, and it didn't happen,” Craig said. “It made me feel less of a parent that I couldn't protect him when he needed it."
"You had two citizens out there, one who had admitted to committing a crime. He said, ‘I choked the kid because he defied me’ and another one who simply said, ‘My son was the victim of a crime,” Merritt said. “The difference between those two citizens was one was white and the other was black. The white guy went home that night. My client just got out of jail recently, so the inference of racism is there. And unless they can offer a more plausible explanation why this happened and why countless incidents just like this happen all over the country, then we're gonna call a spade, and it's racism."
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Dr. Robert Taylor, who teaches Criminology and Policing at UT Dallas, is used as a police expert across the nation after major incidents. He was baffled by the officer’s actions.
“I don't quite understand that kind of behavior on the part of the officer,” Taylor said. “Officers are taught and trained over and over again that when you go to neighborhood disturbances there's gonna be people yelling at you and you've just got to be professional through the whole thing.”
Meanwhile, Fort Worth police issued an alert to its officers about a threat from a man who posted the video on Facebook. The department said the man is known to police and threatened to kill white police officers in Fort Worth.
More than 200 people attended a demonstration Thursday night outside of the old Tarrant County Courthouse in response to the viral video.