Police lied and said a Black baby that they took from a family’s SUV was wondering barefoot during unrest in Philadelphia over the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr.
The police reach a new low every day, and their lies never cease to amaze the world. The latest one comes from the nation’s largest police union. On Thursday, the Fraternal Order of Police posted a Philadelphia police officer holding a Black toddler clinging to her neck and used it as propaganda.
“This child was lost during the violent riots in Philadelphia, wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness,” the union claimed. “The only thing this Philadelphia police officer cared about at that moment was protecting this child.” According to Katie Shepherd of The Washington Post, the photo was tweeted on Twitter and posted on Facebook, but it’s since been deleted.
The child’s family said that’s a lie, saying the police organization’s story was totally made up. The child’s family says what really happened was the police took the child from the back of an SUV after busting out all of the vehicle’s windows and violently arresting and injuring the child’s mother. The woman was later released without charges, the outlet reports.
It didn’t long for the story to make it online, drawing many people to point out the sadistic act of the police. “It’s propaganda,” attorney Riley H. Ross III told The Washington Post. “Using this kid in a way to say, ‘This kid was in danger and the police were only there to save him,’ when the police actually caused the danger. That little boy is terrified because of what the police did.”
Philadelphia has had over four nights of unrest amid the police killing of Wallace. The mother was attacked and arrested on the first night of the protests in Philadelphia. It was a little after midnight on Tuesday when Rickia Young, a 28-year-old old home health aide, used her sister’s car to drive across town to West Philadelphia to pick up her teenage nephew from a friend’s house, Mincey said. She placed her 2-year-old son in the back seat and went on her journey. On her way back home, she got blocked off by police and protesters. The woman tried to turn around after being instructed by police, but when they were seemingly tired of waiting, they broke into her car, shattered her windows, and threw Young and her 16-year-old nephew out of the car.
“Her face was bloodied and she looked like she had been beaten by a bunch of people on the street,” said Kevin Mincey, who will be representing the mother alongside Ross in a civil rights case. “She is still in pain.”
