Video shows Chicago police handcuffing 10-year-old after calls about man with gun

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Chicago authorities are looking into a video that surfaced showing a 10-year-old boy being handcuffed and detained after receiving a call about a black male with a gun.

Chicago Police Handcuff 10-year-old

NBC-5 News reported young Michael Thomas Jr, a fourth-grader, was handcuffed outside his grandmother’s home and leaned against the hood of a cop car as police questioned him about possessing a firearm.

Case of mistaken identity

The boy’s family said they believed it was a case of mistaken identity but are saddened and demanding answers about the incident.

“That’s our kid. They need to apologize,” Thomas Jr.’s mother, Starr Ramsey, told WMAQ-TV. “He’s going to be scared for the rest of his life now. I want answers. You can look at him and tell he’s not a teenager. Ten years old, you get handcuffed? You scarred him for life.”

Michael’s uncle, Victor, confronted the officers at the scene and can be heard on the video questioning why his nephew was in handcuffs.

“They’re telling them that someone called them saying that there is a 12-year-old black kid on a bike with all blue on had a gun,” the uncle is heard saying in the video. “There was about five little black boys with all blue on.”

About 15 minutes later the handcuffs were removed.

Chicago Police Handcuffed 10-year-old Investigation

Police Superintendent. Eddie Johnson said Wednesday that police officers “followed all of the rules and protocols” when they handcuffed Thomas Jr., but an internal investigation will be conducted to make certain of it.

“The call came out as a young man 10-to 12 years old that was passing out a gun and the description fully matched the individual that they stopped,” Johnson said.

“Keep in mind, this is difficult for an officer to tell right off the bat if you’re 10-years-old, 12-years-old [or] 14…So, they handcuffed the kid for safety reasons because he did match that description. They followed all the rules and protocols that we have in place. So, I’m not concerned about that at all.”

Johnson said that an internal investigation is under way to make sure certain protocols were followed.

“I can only imagine the mother’s and grandmother’s anguish that that child had to go through that situation. So, we’re investigating it, just to ensure that everything was done properly,” the superintendent said.

Photo by Jason Lawrence, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons