BALTIMORE - Police arrested a 7-year-old boy, handcuffed him and
hauled him down to the station house on a charge of riding a
motorized dirt bike on a sidewalk.
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Then, according to his mother, Gerard Mungo Jr. was handcuffed to a
bench and interrogated before being released to his parents.
"They scared me," Gerard told The Baltimore Examiner before
breaking down in tears.
Mayor Sheila Dixon apologized Friday for the arrest, and police
commissioner Leonard Hamm said it would be investigated
internally.
The arrest came after an officer saw Gerard riding his dirt bike on
the sidewalk in east Baltimore on Tuesday, police spokesman Matt
Jablow said. Hamm, citing the internal probe, declined to discuss
how the rest of the incident unfolded.
Lakisia Dinkins said her son was sitting on the bike with the motor
off on the sidewalk when an officer grabbed him by the collar and
pulled him off.
"I told them to let go of my baby," Dinkins said. "Since when do
you pull a 7-year-old child by his neck and drag him?"
Dinkins said she called for a police supervisor to intervene, but
the confrontation continued to escalate after the supervisor
arrived.
"They started yelling at him, 'Do you know what you did wrong,
son?'" Dinkins said. "He was so scared he ran upstairs."
Police arrested Gerard and confiscated the bike.
Dinkins said officers fingerprinted him and took his mug shot. Hamm
could not confirm that and said those actions would not have been
normal procedure in a non-felony case.
Dinkins said the arrest scarred her son. "This has changed his
life," she said. "He'll never be the same."
The Police Department's zero-tolerance arrest policy begun under
former Mayor Martin O'Malley, who is now Maryland's governor has
drawn complaints that such arrests occur most often in poor, black
neighborhoods. Gerard is black.
Hamm said the officer had the option of talking with a parent or
confiscating the bike. He said that although the city is concerned
about nuisance dirt bikes, the arrest "was not consistent with my
philosophy of trying to solve problems in the neighborhoods."
The mayor, who appeared Friday with Hamm, said she also planned to
look into the case.
"It is clear to me that the arrest was wrong, that the officers on
the scene should not have arrested the child, and on behalf of the
City of Baltimore I apologize to the boy and his parents," Dixon
said.
