Name: 'Can you take the gun off him? He's 8 years old, man': Video shows controversial traffic stop
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'Can you take the gun off him? He's 8 years old, man': Video shows controversial traffic stop

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Copyright © 2022, The San Diego Union-Tribune | | AdvertisementAdvertisement The San Diego Police Department on Wednesday released body-worn camera video of a traffic stop that caused a stir after a photo that was circulated online appeared to show an officer pointing his gun at a boy. The Police Department said the officer did not point his gun at the child, as indicated in . The boy’s father, however, apparently believed otherwise during the Tuesday afternoon traffic stop in the Hillcrest area. In the video, the boy’s father asks the officer not to point the gun at his 8-year-old son. AdvertisementThe video shows the officer had pointed his gun at the father — who had been pulled over — until he was taken into custody. Then the officer points his gun toward the passenger’s side of the car as the boy gets out. The officer aims his gun away from the boy as he walks toward officers. In response to the encounter, Councilwoman Monica Montgomery Steppe, chair of the City Council’s Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee, called on the Police Department to review how children are treated during traffic stops.According to police, a motorcycle officer saw the car going about 70 mph in a 40 mph zone on Park Boulevard about 12:50 p.m. The officer turned on his lights and sirens to stop the car, but the driver didn’t pull over. The officer called for backup, thinking the driver was trying to get away, police said.The car stopped on Park Boulevard near Cypress Avenue. Police said officers carried out a “high-risk traffic stop” — a situation in which officers believe they may face a potentially dangerous situation. The body-worn camera video begins with officers asking the man in the driver’s seat to step out of the car and turn his face away from them. “My kid is crying, dude, can you take the gun...” the man says. “Alright, back up toward my voice,” an officer tells him. The man walks backwards toward officers before he is taken into custody. “Is it just your son in there?” an officer asks the man. An officer then asks the child to get out of the car as the officer with the gun drawn aims at the passenger’s side of the car. An officer asks the boy to put his hands in the air. “Can you take the gun off him, bro,” the man tells the officer. “Can you take that gun off of him. He’s 8 years old, man.”In a statement, police spokesman Lt. Shawn Takeuchi said, “The officer never pointed his firearm at the child and maintained his aim at the vehicle.” As the boy begins to walk toward officers, the officer aims his gun to the left of the car, the video shows. “Just come over to us all right,” the officer tells the boy. “You’re good, bud.” A motorcycle officer walks up to the boy and asks him to sit nearby on a curb. “You don’t have any weapons on you, right,” the officer asks the boy.As officers search the car, the motorcycle officer kneels down next to the boy and talks to him about the traffic stop. “You know, your dad was driving really really fast. Did it feel like that to you? No? Ok,” the officer says. “Did you hear the siren behind you guys for a while? Yeah? Well, so, your dad was supposed to pull over when that siren was going and he didn’t for whatever reason.“So we don’t know what’s going, and that’s why we had to pull the guns and stuff like that, because we don’t know who he is. We don’t know who you are. We don’t know who’s in the car. So that’s why, bud, OK?“You, you’re not in trouble, OK?”Video recorded by a bystander and posted to YouTube shows a clinician on a Psychiatric Emergency Response Team standing next to the boy. “As we work to reimagine public safety in our city, we must normalize honestly acknowledging when trauma has been inflicted on our residents, which further erodes the fabric of trust within our communities of color,” Montgomery Steppe said in a statement. “My heart is heavy today, as we have seen trauma unfold for this child during a traffic stop.”In addition to calling on the Police Department to review how officers interact with children during traffic stops, she also asked the department to “thoroughly detail what resources are available to mitigate the impact of these traumatic events.”Police said the boy’s father was cited on suspicion of reckless driving, a misdemeanor, then released. “The father and son left together after the citation was issued,” the Police Department said in a statement, which was included in the video. About 35 protesters, most dressed in all black, gathered Wednesday night outside the Police Department’s downtown headquarters, where they called on the officer in the video to be fired, among other things. Police shut down four intersections around the building with steel barriers, and posted about 20 officers on each corner wearing helmets and holding batons. The demonstration lasted from about 7 p.m. to about 9:45 p.m., and ended without any physical confrontations between police and protesters. The police statement said the body-worn camera footage was released “to clarify the facts of this incident and to promote public trust.” The release of the video came hours after a on social media caused uproar. The picture showed the officer with his gun drawn and the child with his hands in the air. Staff writer Alex Riggins contributed to this report. Updates Sign up to get Breaking News email alerts Get alerts on severe weather, road closures and other major breaking news. 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Copyright © 2022, The San Diego Union-Tribune | | AdvertisementAdvertisement The San Diego Police Department on Wednesday released body-worn camera video of a traffic stop that caused a stir after a photo that was circulated online appeared to show an officer pointing his gun at a boy. The Police Department said the officer did not point his gun at the child, as indicated in . The boy’s father, however, apparently believed otherwise during the Tuesday afternoon traffic stop in the Hillcrest area. In the video, the boy’s father asks the officer not to point the gun at his 8-year-old son....

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David Hernandez

The San Diego Union-Tribune, the region's leading news source since 1868. Follow our journalists, too: http://j.mp/UTstaff

'Can you take the gun off him? He's 8 years old, man': Video shows controversial traffic stop

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