Bobbi Wilson had an idea. After watching a TikTok video on a nontoxic recipe for a spray to kill lanternflies, the 9-year-old decided to try it out to protect her own neighborhood.
But when her neighbor Gordon Lawshe saw her, he called the police.
“There’s a little Black woman, walking, spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees,” the 71-year-old former councilman reported. “I don’t know what the hell she’s doing; it scares me though.”
Fortunately, Bobbi did not join the extensive list of Black children police have brutalized in response to a 911 call. In fact New Jersey’s West Caldwell Police Department invited Bobbi and her mother to “tour the station and talk more about police’s role in the community.”
But this isn’t enough.
A 2021 study reported that, due to adultification bias, police harm Black girls at a disproportionately increasing rate. Another study found that “Black girls as young as five are assumed to need less protection and nurturing than white girls of the same age.”
The police system directs and encourages the adultification of Black youth, even from those of us who don’t wear a badge. We’re trying to build a better, safer future for next generations. Policing cannot be a part of it.