'No matter what I do, I'm not in control': what happens when the state takes your child
Two and a half years before a convenience store in Minnesota called the police on George Floyd, a Black father, suspecting a counterfeit bill, a convenience store in Rhode Island called the police on a Black mother named Christina after she argued with the checkout clerk.
Christina, 23, was living in a family shelter and taking classes at the local community college, striving towards her longtime goal of launching a non-profit organization for youth. “I think I was called to help people,” she often said. Her son, Anthony, the center of her life, was two years old. (“Christina” and “Anthony” are both pseudonyms.)
As Christina later recounted, she ran into the store that day with Anthony to get change for bus fare. The cashier didn’t want to change Christina’s $20 and made a snide comment. From there, the argument escalated. Christina said the cashier came out from behind the counter and got in her face. Christina left, but not before the store made a “keep the peace” call to the police.
The police didn’t keep the peace – they disrupted it. When they stopped her, Christina was already on her way to work, pushing Anthony’s stroller across the street. Exasperated, she recalled saying: “Officer, if I would’ve destroyed the store or did something, I could see me being stopped, but I left the store, so can I please go?” If anyone needed police intervention, she thought, it was the cashier.
Yet the officers arrested Christina, citing disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and obstruction. They didn’t appreciate her challenging their authority, acknowledging in their report that they would have let her go had she not protested. The police account stated that she “went ballistic” and “started acting irrationally”, swearing, spitting at, and hitting the officers, with one detective saying that he had not seen someone so out of control in a long time. Christina, meanwhile, described two officers pushing her, crying, to the ground when trying to handcuff her, which didn’t make it into the police report. Anthony, watching his mother’s arrest, squirmed out of his stroller to intervene.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/11/us-child-protective-services-family-mother
Typical police/DCS overreach. Why can't DCS do what it's SUPPOSED to do instead of taking the easy way out?
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