BALTIMORE, March 16, 2007
Cops Arrest 7-Year-Old On Dirt Bike
Baltimore Mayor Apologizes After Boy Was Handcuffed And Booked For Allegedly Riding On Sidewalk
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(AP / CBS)
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The youngster's offense? He allegedly rode a dirt bike on a sidewalk.
"They scared me," Gerard Mungo Jr., age 7, told The Baltimore Examiner before breaking down in tears.
"They locked me up on the bench with one hand," he said.
The incident brought new heat on a department already under fire for making what critics call frivolous or unnecessary arrests.
Mayor Sheila Dixon apologized Friday for the arrest.
"It is clear to me that the arrest was wrong, that the officers on the scene should not have arrested the child, and on behalf of the City of Baltimore I apologize to the boy and his parents," she said at a press conference Friday, flanked by the police commissioner.
Police commissioner Leonard Hamm, while noting concern over the nuisance of dirt bikes, said that the arrest of the 7-year-old "was not consistent with my philosophy of trying to solve problems in the neighborhoods" and would be investigated internally.
Gerard's family members say the bike wasn't even running at the time, reports CBS station WJZ-TV. "They yanked me off the dirt bike," Gerard said.
The police commissioner said that the officer had the option of having a conversation with the parent or confiscating the bike. He declined to discuss how the incident unfolded, saying more time was needed to complete the internal investigation.
Dinkins, who turned 7 last month, was sitting on the bike Tuesday with the motor off on a sidewalk near his home in east Baltimore when an officer grabbed him by the collar and pulled him off the bike, according to his mother, Kikisa Dinkins, who witnessed the arrest.
"I told them to let go of my baby," Dinkins recalled. "Since when do you pull a 7-year-old child by his neck and drag him?"
Dinkins said she called for a police supervisor to intervene, but the confrontation continued to escalate after the supervisor arrived on the scene.
"They started yelling at him, 'Do you know what you did wrong, son?"' Dinkins said. "He was so scared he ran upstairs."
Police confiscated the dirt bike and placed her son under arrest.
At the station, young Gerard was handcuffed to a bench and interrogated, before he was released to the custody of his parents, his mother said. Hamm could not confirm that the child was fingerprinted and photographed. He said that would not have been normal procedure in a non-felony case.
The zero-tolerance arrest policy of former Mayor Martin O'Malley, now Maryland's governor, has become a contentious issue in Baltimore, with State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy, some judges and civil rights activists complaining such arrests occur most often in poor, black neighborhoods.
Dixon said Friday that the arrest isn't reflective of her philosophy on policing, and Hamm agreed.
Dinkins said the incident has scarred her son. "This has changed his life," she said. "He'll never be the same."
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
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See all 84 CommentsGET REAL PEOPLE. A BABY WAS MANHANDLED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MAYHAP YOUR PERSONAL {& OUTDATED)ARE NOT THE PROBLEM HERE.
Posted by ToolMangler at 07:42 PM : Mar 18, 2007"
I haven't a clue the pigmentation of the US government thug.
However, you can bet your bottom dollar that he was working on behalf of the 'system', the racist system that is ALWAYS overeager to rob personal freedom and enslave young African men, especially, in America's prisons to this day. LOL
Posted by me4prezz at 04:54 PM : Mar 18, 2007"
Good point!
Now if Americans the most powerful and most influential people on the planet could evolve to the stage where they could acknowledge, regret, repent and recompense their centuries of slavery, do you know that would go a long way to send the signal that SLAVERY IS NOT OK TODAY?
But because mighty America can't even admit the egregious wrong done over the centuries in stealing people's lives, liberties, blood, sweat, tears, and futures for descendants, the POWERFUL US CONTINUES TO SET THE BAD EXAMPLE FOR THE SLAVERS OF TODAY!
Reminds us of the Nazis and the bigots of South Africa using America's racist policies as a template for their fiendish acts inhumanities.
America needs to LEAD, and those unfortunate women and children won't dare be taken by the beasts among us who prey on the weak! OK?
Stop defending rubbish; because in doing so, we mighty Americans become responsible for promoting the evils to this day!
Read the whole post and stop picking and choosing whatever it is you feel like. As I recall, in my post, I put that they WERE WORKING THE FIELDS SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE SLAVES AND THAT FREED SLAVES ALSO OWNED SLAVES, A MUCH LARGER PERCENTAGE ACTUALLY THAN WERE WHITES.
Again, I ask, when were you ever kidnapped, drapped across countries and sold into slavery? You, personally, right now in today's society. Do you even have ancestors that were slaves? I sincerely doubt it.
My family survived the horrors of the Scotland wars, several died in the holocaust, and more are now fighting across seas while I work at a hospital to help people who need it. What is it that you do that makes you so intellectually superior to all in your own feeble mind?! If you want to see true suffering or what slavery is like today, go see the slave traders who are selling women and children in the s e x slave trade today or those who are starving, beaten, abused, raped, and more all over the world. Sit at your computer, pull your foot out of your mouth and your head out of your arse and get a life!
Posted by me4prezz at 12:01 AM : Mar 18, 2007"
That position of yours that you so nonchalantly expressed is held by majority of Americans.
Once you agree that slavery was wrong (robbing people of their FREEDOM), THERE CAN BE NO BUT, 'cept if one is with the racists!
If those enslavers needed workers, why the hell don't you recognize that they should get off their lazy arses and go do their dam work themselves?
And to compare the enslaved African people in America with migrant workers is another expression of racism.
Africans were KIDNAPPED UNPROVOKED and dragged across seas.
Your migrant workers VOLUNTEERED to leave their countries! Those migrant workers wanted to come to America and risk abuse.
The African HAD NO such interest, to leave a nice continent and nice climate to go to America and live like Inuits in shocking cold climate!
You are speaking from both sides of your mouth with that forked tongue. You are deceptively suggesting that slavery was wrong; yet you are intent on hedging.
That shows a lack of integrity, a lack of virtue, which of course is no surprise because it is that kind of vacillation that keeps American racism alive and well after hundreds of years. LOL
For one so good at throwing around words, why don't you ever answer any questions on your own heritage? Afraid of being seen as the hypocrical liar you are?
Here are some facts for you:
In 1860, there were 27 million whites in this country. Of those, only 8 million lived slave-holding states. Of those, only 385,000 owned slaves and not all of them white. If you were to say they were all white, that would be only 1.4% of the total population. So, yes, a SMALL percentage.
However, there were NOT all whites. Freed slaves also KEPT SLAVES! In 1830, 1/4 of all freed slave masters owned 10+ slaves and 8 owned 30 . June 1, 1860, 4.5 million blacks in US. 261,988 were not slaves. In New Orleans alone, there were 10,689 freed slaves, of which 28% owned slaves compared to 1.4% of whites.
Finally, those that did own slaves, the majority, yes, that is right, the MAJORITY, worked, ate, and slept side-by-side with the slaves in working the fields and were not harsh. That is not to say slavery was not wrong, but the comments that slave owners were routinely harsh and mean and did nothing is wrong. They needed workers to work the fields. Is that much different than the migrant workers who work in the fields today under terrible conditions for a few cents an hour?
Need more examples? I got plenty.
Posted by sshard at 11:46 PM : Mar 17, 2007"
Are you posting from Asia?
For you certainly can simultaneously be 'here' in America first and be Asian! LOL
Posted by ToolMangler at 11:40 PM : Mar 17, 2007"
Don't need your sympathy, Mangler. Save it; YOU will need it as soon as your consciousness evolves some and you understand how life truly works a bit more.
For those with expanded vision, they know and are secured in the reality of life that, All karmic debts are ALWAYS paid in due course.
Not even the powerful (but ignorant) escapes.
Posted by me4prezz at 11:16 PM : Mar 17, 2007"
I use the 'LOL' because I don't need your 'hatred' to deal with a virtueless dunce who invaded as a murdering, raping thief all the way from Scotland, and then childishly telling other Americans (with even more rights) to leave land, of which he IS NOT INDIGENOUS!
You have NO natural right to America!
As far as the Laws of Nature goes, you are an invading thief! OK?
Only indigenous people have natural claims to their particular part of the Earth. Your claim it seems would be Scotland. You can't be of two places.
Europeans are only in America because from time to time the forces of evil are strong enough to overrun a place; but KARMA, my fellow American WILL CATCH UP in due course! It ALWAYS does. What is sowed is ALWAYS reaped eventually.
Why would such a one as myself invest the emotional capital to 'hate' on you?
You think too highly of yourself. LOL
Posted by me4prezz at 10:40 PM : Mar 17, 2007"
Yes, it is well known: African people were sacrificed to build the 'nation' of America UNASKED, KIDNAPPED, ENSLAVED AND UN-RECOMPENSED!
And STILL after two hundred years no reparation is forthcoming, not even a Congressional apology?
Then the descendants of evil cowards offer up mere platitudes and think it should suffice?
And you honestly believe that it is only a 'minority' of racists that is ruining it for your IMAGINED 'majority'?
If you really believe that the US Congress that cannot even find it in itself to recognize a grave evil and even apologized for it, represents your 'minority' of 'bad' Americans, then I'm sure you will buy from me that plot I invest in on the Moon, right? LOL
Navajo"---Posted by Agnim.
Are you?
Not that you need to know, but I am descended from Scotland where the battle for freedom was filled with treason, hatred, greed, deceit, and horrors unimaginable.
You should feel lucky that you live in a country where you can spout such filth. In others, you would be arrested and much worse for a tenth of what you say about the US.
And just what makes you so special that you can voice such hatred and bigotry and think it is all a big joke. LOL LOL LOL LOL...give me a break.
Let me guess---You are on disability or welfare, blame the government for your inability to get a job, barely finished high school, think college is for losers, yada yada. You are a drain on society and lack intelligence enough to look in your own mirror and swallow the truth of what you are. A poor, unhappy, poorly educated, low self-esteem individual who has to put blame for your lifestyle on everyone and everything else because you can't admit that you screwed up. Get a job. Get a life.
This poster has looked in the mirror and STILL sees a ToolMangler and a nationmMangler. LOL
Posted by me4prezz at 10:45 PM : Mar 17, 2007"
You first.
Let me guess; you are no doubt descended from one of those invading, murdering, ethnic cleansing thieves from Europe, right?
Or are you Native American?
Navajo? LOL
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