'These are children!' Witness tries to convince deputy to stop attacking teen boy
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While triggering outrage on some social media accounts, video footage of a sheriff’s deputy tackling a Black autistic teen to the floor of a Target store in upstate New York seems to have had a sadly different effect on others. Many of those who responded to a news release posted on Facebook by the office of Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zurlo defended the unidentified sheriff deputy seen in the footage. “Parents teach your children to respect authority!” Facebook user Teresa Hammond commented.
“I’m not a cop, but I take that very seriously as well. Keep after them, Sheriff Zurlo!” local resident Loren Jenks wrote.
It’s almost as if they hadn’t seen the video—and to their credit, the sheriff’s office didn’t include the footage in its post. But for anyone who has seen the video, it’s difficult to miss that the teen being physically targeted on Monday isn’t the one who ended up being charged—it was his sister instead. It begs the question: What reason did the deputy have to put his hands on the child to begin with? That question was not answered in Zurlo’s release.
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According to the sheriff’s office, deputies were responding to a disturbance call in Clifton Park, a city about 165 miles north of Manhattan that’s about 85% white and 3% Black.
The sheriff’s office release focused entirely on the sister of the teen who was brought to the ground. She can be seen in video footage cursing at deputies and demanding that they let her brother go. The 17-year-old girl was ultimately arrested and charged with felony assault and resisting arrest, a misdemeanor. The sheriff’s office alleged she hit a deputy in the face with a soap dish and injured him, although that alleged action was difficult to see in the footage.
“We take all allegations of assault against law enforcement seriously and they will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law,” Zurlo said in the release. “It is my hope that the injuries to our deputy and the trooper were minor and that they suffer no lasting ill-effects.”
The deputy was treated and released from Ellis Medical Center, according to the sheriff’s office.
The sheriff failed to mention any lasting effects on the children who witnessed the deputy tackling the teenage boy.
The video, recorded by a bystander, begins with the boy screaming “ouch” and the sheriff’s deputy saying he was not “getting off” and to just come to the front. At the time, the boy was upright and pulling away from the deputy, who had the teen’s hands pulled behind his back. That’s when the child’s sister turned a corner and confronted the deputy. Someone could be heard sobbing in the footage. “Yo what the f—k are you doing,” the child’s sister asked. “Get the f—k off my brother [before] I spit on you.” She also told the deputy her brother has autism.
It didn’t take long before the deputy had wrestled the teen boy to the ground, with the other children watching and crying. “These are children,” someone could be heard saying. Another person could be heard explaining that they were just being asked to leave. “These are children! These are children!” the witness yelled.
The boy on the ground responded to the deputy’s attack with: “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”
“I have money,” he also offered at another point in the encounter.
Warning: This video contains profanity and footage that may be triggering to some viewers.
The child is 14 years old, his mother, Chante Ware, told the Times Union. “I was in Walmart shopping and got a text message from my daughter,” she told the newspaper. “I called her and all I could hear was my oldest daughter screaming and crying, ‘He’s autistic, he’s autistic.’ I got to Target and there were nine or 10 squad cars there. … I was told my kids are suspects in a larceny.”
Ware said her children are traumatized. ”My daughter has a pulled muscle, my son has a head injury and he’s a little sore,” she told the Times Union. “He’s so confused right now. He keeps saying, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ He doesn’t want to go out of the house and wants to move.”
Ware, who’s looking for an attorney to represent her daughter, said the child was only trying to defend her brother. “They just blatantly attacked my kids,” the mother said. “And then all they care about is the officer. The officer slapped her.”
It’s unclear how the incident started, but Tracy Sangare, the witness who took the videos, told the Times Union a manager informed her that he just wanted the children to leave the store.
“It felt so dangerous and out of control,” Sangare told the newspaper. “Everyone was standing around gawking, not knowing what to do. We were all trying to figure out, who do you call for help when the police are doing this stuff?”