You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Texas Officer Assaults, Arrests Family Who Called 911 for Help

HeadlineDec 23, 2016

In Texas, a Fort Worth police officer has been placed on restrictive duty after an online video showed him violently arresting a woman and her teenage daughter, after the woman called 911 to report an assault on her 7-year-old son. Video of the incident went viral after it was posted to Facebook on Wednesday night. The video shows 46-year-old Jacqueline Craig, who is African-American, telling a white police officer that a white man choked her son after the boy supposedly threw a piece of paper on the ground. The officer, who has not been named, responds, “Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?”

Officer: “Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?”

Jacqueline Craig: “Uh, I didn’t. He can’t prove to me that my son littered. But it doesn’t matter if he did or didn’t. It doesn’t give him the right to put his hands on him.”

The video next shows Jacqueline Craig arguing with the officer over the alleged assault on her son, before the officer tackles and handcuffs Craig, while pointing a weapon at her and at her teenage daughter. The officer then tackles and arrests the girl, as well. In a statement, the Fort Worth Police Department said it has launched an internal affairs investigation into the arrests.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top