Body cam footage released of kids being detained by police; Activists call for change

By Jeff Wagner

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    MAPLEWOOD, Minnesota (WCCO) — Newly-released footage shows a controversial encounter Monday night between a group of kids and Maplewood police.

The department shared video from an officer’s body camera Wednesday night. Police were investigating a call about shots fired, and ended up handcuffing four kids between the ages 10 and 16. But it turns out those kids were not involved.

One of the kids police detained says she still has marks on her wrists from the handcuffs. The situation left her scared and confused. One of the children, a 12-year-old girl, told reporters Wednesday, “I was scared and like I was just thinking like what is gonna happen. Like I was shaking.”

Parents for all four of the children say police went about this the wrong way.

Toshira Garraway has made countless calls for justice in the Twin Cities for families of people killed at the hands of police. She is the founder of Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence. Now, she’s calling for justice for her own son and his three friends — all of whom were cuffed and put into squad cars for several minutes by Maplewood police.

On Monday night, a 911 caller reported seeing four young people near his home after hearing gunshots. Police body camera footage shows how they stopped four children who were walking from a nearby McDonalds, not far from where the shots were heard. They’re asked about potentially having a gun, which two of children vehemently deny.

The 16-year-old explains how they just left the restaurant when the officers says in the video, “I’m not talking about the McDonalds here, I’m talking about like the car lot that’s down the road.” The boy responds, “We wasn’t even down there. Y’all should probably go check about that because we wasn’t down there.”

The group is standing together while police continue questioning them. Several minutes later, the officers put the children in handcuffs after saying the four were seen on surveillance video near the area where shots were fired.

While handcuffed, the 16-year-old asks to call his mom, Garraway. She was upset that her son had to request to call her instead of police doing it on their own. The children were eventually cleared and let go, not long after Garraway and other parents arrived and demanded they be released.

On Tuesday, Lt. Joe Steiner said the officers acted professionally, and that he was proud of their response.

“There is where you should be saying ‘I’m sorry’ to us mothers instead of trying to justify it and saying, ‘Oh we only had them for this amount of time.’ It doesn’t matter if you had them for five seconds, you put them in handcuffs and you threw them in the back of a car,” Garraway said. “I don’t know if race was involved, but it raises a serious question about how this would have went down if these were white children.”

Jeff Storms, the families’ attorney, alluded to a lawsuit in the future.

“We don’t tell you we’re gonna sue until we do it. But I promise you that Ben Crump and I are not here to play patty cakes,” Storms said.

Their attorney says they’re planning to contact police to gather more evidence from the case. Police say they’re still looking for the four people connected to the possible shooting.

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