A Cobb County police officer has been criticized for manhandling a 12-year old boy before his arrest at a Georgia mall earlier this month.
The incident caught on video and posted on Twitter has gone viral.
The officer, whose name is being withehld, detained 12-year old rapper Corey Jackson, better known by his stage name Lil C-Note, at the Cumberland Mall in Cobb County. The little boy was with his aunt, Coraletha Jackson, who captured the shocking video of the cop grabbing her nephew by the arm and threatening to send him to a youth detention center. Critics are calling this the latest example of police officers being overly aggressive with Black children.
The video does show the boy remaining calm even as the officer tightened his grip on the boy’s arm. Jackson was not combative or fighting back.
“You’re 12” the officer asks the boy. “You’re about to go to jail. You’re going to go to a youth detention center if you don’t stop.”
“He’s not doing anything,” Coraletha says, defending the child. “He has his rights. I have his father on the phone and you won’t even speak to him.”
“Yup,” the cop responds smugly.
The incident escalated when the aunt, physically, intervened due to the officer’s hold on her nephew. Cobb County Police Chief Mike Register put the responsibility on the aunt versus the “trained” officer stating: “A lot of people have said that he was manhandled. The officer all he was doing was holding the young man by the arm I believe from the preliminary investigation that the officer was in his legal rights to detain the juvenile.”
The police chief is defending the officer’s action stating that the video doesn’t tell the entire story.
The officer ultimately charged 12-year-old Jackson with felony obstruction, misdemeanor criminal trespass and disorderly conduct, and was released into his father’s custody, the Marietta Daily Journal reported. Meanwhile, his aunt faces charges of felony obstruction, criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and giving a false name and date of birth to police.
