Outrage erupts after police pin child to ground. Bodycam video shows moments before

The child is on his stomach with two officers on either side of him. One officer carries handcuffs out and holds the boy’s arms behind his back. They boy is shirtless, with red shorts. He is black, and the two officers are white.

“I’m sorry!” he says as an officer appears to scold him.

Off-camera, women shout at the officers. “We’re going to send this in! How you going to do a child like that? He is a child!”

The boy is let up, and the women argue with the officers before the video ends.

The video, which was posted to Facebook, sparked a wave of outrage and pushed the Athens, Ga., police department into the national spotlight. The department came under brief scrutiny earlier in the summer after an officer was fired for striking a fleeing suspect with his patrol car.

Thousands of people saw the original video of the child being pinned, and hundreds of commenters questioned the motives and actions of the officers. The poster, named Ariel Collins, wrote that the boy was her cousin, and that he was trying to talk to his dad in the patrol car. Athens NAACP President Alvin Sheats told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the video was “nauseating.”

But the Athens-Clark County Police Department said the video doesn’t show the whole story.

Police said they arrived at a residence and arrested a suspect, later identified as Jawoski Collins, on charges of aggravated assault and false imprisonment for allegedly placing a woman in a choke hold, the University of Georgia’s student newspaper the Red & Black reported.

That man was the boy’s father, and in the course of the arrest, police say the 10-year-old boy “became extremely emotionally distraught.” Police said family members could not restrain him, and that eventually, the boy “lunged” at one of the officers and was restrained.

“Our officer caught the child in mid-air and the momentum of the child launching himself caused the both of them to land on the patrol car,” Athens-Clark County police said in a statement on Facebook. “The child continued to be emotionally distraught, and continued with the outburst, at which time our officer placed him on the ground. While on the ground, the officer continued to attempt to de-escalate the situation, assuring the child that he was not under arrest and that he would let him up if he would remain calm.”

Police released body camera footage of the incident that shows the boy wailing during his father’s arrest, and later jumping toward one of the officers.

Collins, who is being read his rights, notices the boy’s distress, and tells the officers he needs to speak to his son. “Chill,” he tells the boy several times.

“He didn’t shoot nobody! He didn’t shoot nobody!” the child screams.

The boy was pulled back by one of the women speaking to the officers. Then he can be seen running in from the right and leaping in the air.

“Don’t do that. Don’t grab an officer!” one officer says.

“Yes, sir,” the boy says.

The officer picks up the boy and puts him on the grass. “Stop resisting!” he shouts at the squirming boy. “Back up!” he tells the adults who move closer.

“I’m sorry!” the child says.

“Do you understand? You don’t run into a police officer,” the officer says, as the boy says yes and nods. “I don’t need you running around like that.”

They let the child up. He was on the ground for a little more than one minute.

“He attacked my officer,” the officer tells the angry women and tells them to back up.

“Later, police allow the boy to speak to his father through the window of the patrol car. The boy takes his father’s phone and sobs as he asks “When you get out, daddy?” before the video ends.

“We fully believe after watching the bodycam video that and from the paperwork that we have, that they will fully understand that there are two sides to a story and the officers had what they had in front of them and had to deal with what they had to deal with in front of them,” police spokesman Epifanio Rodriguez told WSB.

The boy’s family members say they want consequences.

“They should be fired because if they do one child like that they’ll turn right back around and do somebody else child,” the boy’s grandfather told WXIA. “They could do your child like that - your child - anybody else child like that.”

“If you don’t know how to control no 9-year-old, you don’t deserve a badge,” Collins, who posted the video, told WSB. She gave the boy’s age as 9, though police said he was 10.

Police have started internal affairs investigation to look into the incident, police said.

This story was originally published July 24, 2018 at 8:55 AM.