Police Blasted For Fake Hero Photo After Terrorizing Black Mother and Child During Walter Wallace Protests
During continued protests taking place in Philadelphia in the wake of the police killing of Walter Wallace, the city’s police union posted a photo of a child it claimed was “lost” in the chaos, but lawyers for the child’s family say that was untrue.
In fact, they say the boy was the toddler pulled from the backseat of an SUV as officers bashed its windows in to arrest the child’s mother and her teenage nephew, The Washington Post reports
“This child was lost during the violent riots in Philadelphia, wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness,” the National Fraternal Order of Police wrote in a post that has since been deleted. “The only thing this Philadelphia police officer cared about in that moment was protecting this child.”
Attorneys Riley Ross and Kevin Mincey, who are representing the boy’s family, say that on
Tuesday (Oct. 27), Rickia Young, 28, a home health aide, had borrowed her sister’s car, put her 2-year-old in the back seat and drove across town to pick up her 16-year-old nephew, who was at a friend’s house.
She inadvertently turned onto a street where a demonstration was taking place and police ordered her to turn the vehicle around. When she tried to do so, the officers surrounded the SUV and began to break its windows, pulling Young and her nephew out. She was taken to the hospital for injuries to her head and bruises to the left side of her body. The child suffered a large bump on his forehead.The nephew also suffered injuries in the confrontation. Both were released without charges.
Young phoned her mother while in police custody and it took several hours to locate the boy, Mincey said. When she did, he was sitting in his car seat in the back of a police cruiser that had two officers sitting in the front. Glass shards from the broken windows were still in the car seat.
A viral video was taken by Aapril Rice from her rooftop of the entire incident, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. She told the newspaper that witnessing what happened was “surreal” and seeing the child taken was “the most traumatic part for me.”
Ross and Mincey blasted the FOP for depicting a rescue of the boy, when it was anything but.
“It’s propaganda,” Ross told The 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.”
Reporters from the Philadelphia Inquirer contacted the FOP about the social media post, but soon after they reached out it was deleted and the union never responded to a second call, the newspaper said.
Mincey told The Post that Young was the victim in the whole incident and was the one who suffered.
“Her face was bloodied and she looked like she had been beaten by a bunch of people on the street,” he said. “She is still in pain. She wasn’t out looting or out doing anything. She wasn’t even charged with a crime.”
RELATED: Walter Wallace Case: Philadelphia Man Described As Close To His Family, But Struggled With Mental Illness
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