The Sacramento, California City Council has just released some
police body camera video of local police putting a ten year old girl who
was in pajamas in handcuffs, and they did this as she cried and sobbed.
The incident from February 2022 was part of a two year audit of
complaints that the city council asked for,
complaints against the police department that they then reviewed.
And it was part of this was to sort of take a look at, well,
how responsive are the police?
Are they responding to complaints?
Are the complaints making a difference?
On this particular video clip that we're gonna show you in just a second here that
was released, you had members of the local Sacramento police force, all white,
who were going to an African American home, and they were looking to for
do a probation check on a verified gang member.
So no problem there.
But take a look at the aggressiveness and the tone that the police used and
continued to use when the gang member didn't show up, but this little girl did,
who, by the way, was watching her bedridden grandmother.
Here's the video.
>> Hi, can you unlock this, please?
[SOUND].
Can you open this screen doors?
The police department.
Can you open this?
Hey, Sacramento Police Department, come to the door.
[SOUND].
The door.
Can you open this man?
Come to the door right now.
>> Listen, we're going to kick the door down, and we don't want to do that.
>> Come to the door right now.
Open the door.
>> I'm a baby.
>> Open the door.
>> You're not a baby if you're not listening.
>> Open the door. Come outside.
>> Come outside right now.
>> Who is here?
[INAUDIBLE] >> No,
you don't get to go and hide and turn off the lights.
That's not how this works.
Okay, but you're gonna be the handcuffs because you're not listening.
Why are you running and hiding?
>> I don't know, am scared.
I don't know what to do.
>> How old are you?
>> Am ten.
>> At that point, the police officer took the handcuffs off of the sobbing girl and
went from taunting and gruff to a bit more empathetic and calm.
The police audit found that this handcuffing of a ten year old girl
did not violate police policy because such policy does not exist.
As the Sacramento Bee reports, the city's Inspector General, Dwight White, and
CPSA director LaTesha Watson showed a snippet of body camera footage during
Tuesday's City Council meeting,
eliciting tears from several members of the audience.
During the video, from February 10, 2022, several white male officers can be seen
screaming at people inside to open the door, grabbing the metal screen, and
forcibly shaking it so hard it looks like it will fall off the hinges.
The audit revealed a systemic problem of officers engaging in
a pattern of unreasonable stops, searches, and seizures, violating
community members Fourth Amendment rights, especially Black and Latino residents.
It included 109 complaint cases of improper search and
seizure from June 2020 through June 2023.
Police Chief Kathy Lester said she agreed with parts of the audit which contain
helpful recommendations, but disagreed with the finding that
racial bias in search and seizure actions is systemic.
It is worth noting that the police chief defended the officer's detainment of
the girl, but the chief acknowledged that they should have detained her in another
way without using handcuffs and that handcuffs were not necessary.
However, the police department also points out that the handcuffs were only on for
30 seconds, they say.
Well, a number of mental health experts point out that even
30 seconds of a traumatic experience like this is
something that could scar this young girl for a lifetime.
There are a number of cities, Cenk, across the United States that simply do not have
a policy when it comes to whether or
not their officers should handcuff young children.
That is now something being reviewed, at least in Sacramento.
>> Yeah, so look, to double down on what David said, they go out there and
do a probation check, nothing wrong with that.
They're frustrated that they can't get an answer, we get it, okay?
But when you see the girl and you see how young she is,
you can't have that reaction, okay?
And you can't justify that reaction.
So I got a ten year old daughter, coincidentally.
My God.
If cops came in and then handcuffed her just like that, yeah, she'd be a wreck.
You know why?
Because she's ten years old.
And that's super traumatic, because they don't know what's going on, and
we tell her not to answer the door to strangers.
I'm sure this person was told the same thing.
In fact, I think in the story, they did explain that she was told that's why
she turned off the lights, because she thought it's a stranger.
I'm not supposed to answer the door.
I'm worried, her grandmother is bedridden inside.
Look, miscommunications happen, but
we've got to teach cops to be decent to the citizens.
That's the policy that doesn't exist, and that's what I'm most worried about.
Now, is there also an issue of race?
Look, I'd be surprised if they did it to my daughter.
I got to be honest with you.
And why?
So my wife is Asian.
So my daughter's half Asian and half whatever, I am Mediterranean or whatever.
She looks fairly Asian.
We're in a middle class neighborhood.
I'd be surprised.
I'd be surprised, okay?
But it doesn't have to be anecdotal you don't have to take my word for it, etc.
No, they did an audit, and there's a pattern where they target Blacks and
Latinos.
Now, why do they do that, by the way?
Is it just because, my God, all the cops are racist?
No, because unfortunately, demographically, in this country,
Blacks and Latinos are not as wealthy as whites in general, okay?
And by the way, Asians.
And so it's easier to target minority communities with less power.
We've had cops on the show who are good, honest folks who retired,
who came and said, yeah, I mean, we're not gonna go and patrol the rich
white part of town because you arrest the wrong ten year old in this case.
But they said, of course, adult, in that case, you arrest the wrong guy,
you could be in a world of trouble.
But when you target Black and
Latino communities, you aren't gonna be in trouble.
That was the old days.
Now, because some of these cameras, they are getting in trouble and
that's a good thing that should lead to reform.
And reform doesn't mean no cops, and it also doesn't mean we don't change anything
and we just give the cops more money.
It means, God damn it,
will somebody reform these police departments all across the country?
>> Cenk I've looked at this video and it runs several minutes.
It was posted by the Sacramento City Council.
I've looked at it a couple of different ways and
we've got a video up on it on Rebel HQ.
And one of the things that sort of jumps out to me every time I see this is that at
the moment that the little girl sort of walks out, you have the one cop who says
you're going to jail, taunting her, hectoring her, frightening her.
And to me, it gets right in with the training point that you were mentioning,
and that is police, it's almost like it's institutional.
They are culturally trained, I think, to dominate situations, to be a force,
to not have anything, any sort of officer safety in jeopardy.
And the way they do that is they are told you must take control, you must dominate,
be the alpha male or the alpha female, whatever it is.
The problem with that is that it doesn't allow enough time for an officer to take
a step back, take a deep breath and say, my God, this is just a ten year old girl.
Hey, let's lower a voice, let's try to de escalate,
let's not make people as nervous.
There's no time for that because police officers are reflexively trained to go in
heavy, to go in strong, to be aggressive.
And that's a key part of this,
that when you talk to people and you talk to police about what needs to change,
what's a fundamental change that needs to be done in police training.
The attitude needs to change away from dominating as quickly as possible and
more towards, okay, let's all take a deep breath,
as we encourage children to do in schools, that instead of just lashing out,
if you're angry, you take a deep breath and you count to five and then react.
If we could only get police officers to be trained to do that as well,
I think you would see communities then start to respond better.
And you wouldn't have cases like this where now you have a girl,
she's ten years old now, or twelve years old, or two years later,
she may have a view of police that is terrible for the rest of her life.
And that does not help her, her community, and it certainly does not help the police.
>> And the corollary to that problem, David, is that we mainly tell the cops,
take control and do it right away, because anyone can shoot you within half a second.
So make sure that you're dominating, sometimes shooting, beating, etc,
before the other guy gets a chance to do it.
No, no, it's supposed to be a tough job where you make judgment calls, and
yes, sometimes you wait past half a second before you light into someone,
hey, look, it's a ten year old, I shouldn't do it.
In the case of Tamir Rice, look, it's a twelve year old with a toy gun,
which almost all kids have,
maybe I should have waited more than a second before I shot him to death, right?
But we don't teach the cops that, why?
Because honestly, they're being selfish.
They're saying, well, I'd rather take a risk with your life,
whether I'm traumatizing a ten year old or I'm killing a twelve year old,
I'd rather take that risk than any risk with my life.
Well, then don't be a cop.
Go be an accountant.
Good, there's a lot of safe jobs.
I mean, imagine if the fire department was, what do you want us to do?
Risk our lives by going into a burning building?
Yeah, that's kind of the job.
So please do your job and do it with thoughtfulness and good judgment.
Isn't it sound as I said that out loud, didn't almost all of you
think there's no chance the cops in America are gonna do that?
There's something wrong with our system of government when we think there's
no way in the world cops or politicians will ever do the right thing and
will ever listen to the citizens.
Something deeply wrong.