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| The two women who were arrested by Fort Worth police are telling the junk food media that the cop was out of line. |
Looks like the social media is lit up once again over the Jacqueline Craig arrest video. Ms. Craig and her two daughters were arrested by a Fort Worth police officer after they called to report a man choking the woman's 7-year old son.
This incident was recorded in its entirety.
Be warned the video contains explicit language and scenes of violence.
The Facebook Live video, shot by Jacqueline Craig’s daughter, Brea Hymond, 19, begins with Craig, 46, and her family confronting a man painting his fence in the 7400 block of Rock Garden Trail. Then, viewers hear Craig’s 911 call saying the man assaulted her 7-year-old son by grabbing his neck for littering.
Seven minutes in, an unidentified man who appears to know Craig gets out of a white car, approaches the man painting his fence, tells him to keep his hands off the boy, gets into his car and drives away.
When the officer arrives, he first asks the accused man what happened, then asks Craig what happened.
While she gives the officer her account, Craig says her son’s littering didn’t give the man the right to touch him.
“Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?” says the officer, who has not been identified.
“He can’t prove that my son littered,” Craig responds. “But it doesn’t matter if he did or didn’t, it doesn’t give him the right to put his hands on him.”
“Why not?” the officer says.
A struggle between the two ensues and Craig’s 15-year-old daughter, Jacques Hymond, steps between them.
The officer then pulls his Taser, wrestles Craig to the ground and puts her in handcuffs before pointing the Taser at Jacques, who was lying in the street. She is also handcuffed and placed with her mom in the police vehicle.
The screen goes black about 16 minutes in, when the officer arrests Brea Hymond and takes the phone from her but does not turn it off.
Around 20 minutes into the video, a conversation between the officer and Jacques is heard.
“Who’s kicking my door? Who’s kicking my door? Was that you?” the officer asks.
“It don’t matter. You kicked me,” Jacques says.
“Yeah,” the officer replies.
“You kicked me on my side,” she says.
“When a police officer tells you to get in the car, you get in the car,” the officer says.
“I don’t know how to. I’m 15 years old,” she replies.
Jacques told the Star-Telegram after the incident that she was kicked while being put into the police vehicle.
“I am 15 years old. How was I supposed to know I wasn’t supposed to interfere?” Jacques said. “I was just trying to protect my mom.”
In the final 15 minutes of the video, the officer talks to Craig and Jacques in the patrol car before Jacques is taken by another officer to a juvenile detention center.
The officer turns the phone off just after the 29-minute mark.
Police told Fox 4 News that they have a copy of the full video and it is expected to be analyzed by internal affairs.
The video that went viral after it was posted Wednesday night — with 3.2 million views on Facebook, to date — was six minutes long and didn’t include portions from the beginning and end. The six-minute video was posted on Facebook by a family relative, Porsha Craver, who recorded it on another phone.
A YouTube user by the name of Black Power Prince posted the full version on YouTube. It shows 11 minutes before the officer arrived and more than 13 minutes after the women were arrested.
At a news conference with city officials last week, Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald called the officer’s actions rude, but said, “I can’t call [the incident] racism.”
“What I can say is that I noticed in the video that the officer was rude,” Fitzgerald said. “And there’s a difference between rude and racism.”
The officer has been placed on restricted duty while internal affairs conducts an investigation.
