The image went viral. A Black mom handcuffed on the ground before armed police — and her tiny daughter face down on the ground right beside her. Even Florida's Winter Haven Police Department admitted the "optics" were "terrible."
After a fight between a store employee and Mariah Banks' boyfriend, police were called. Banks' boyfriend attempted to distance himself, hoping to protect the child from the scene. But armed police ordered Banks to get on the ground. Her 3-year-old daughter followed, crying: "No, please don't shoot us. And don't kill us."
Months ago, a New York child-sensitive arrest bill outlined the trauma children experience when witnessing cops arrest their parents. Forty percent of the children experience "significant emotional and behavioral problems." Arrests of Black and Hispanic parents are 50 times more likely to involve force.
To Chief Vance Monroe, what happened was "heartbreaking," but cops supposedly did their best — even offering Banks’ toddler some candy afterward. "Fear and mistrust of police officers," he argued, "is a larger societal issue," starting with parents who "tease" children into fearing cops. No.
Fear and mistrust exist because police give us a reason to fear their violence. The criminal legal system’s relentless abuse birthed “the Talk" Black parents have had to give children for generations, not the other way around. We've fought to keep each other safe, not alongside, but despite policing. Shifting blame to pretend otherwise is, in itself, violent.