DURHAM, N.C. — Police video released Tuesday shows two Durham officers pointing their guns at and handcuffing a 15-year-old boy as he lay face down on the cement, his hands raised.
A woman, holding a crying child in her arms, screams, "That's a baby!" An officer shouts at the woman, "Relax!"
"Please take them cuffs off him," the woman says.
The officer tells her that police had received a call about someone in a tank top holding a gun.
"He's a child," the woman says.
"Children carry guns," the officer replies.
The city of Durham released the body camera video from the Aug. 21 encounter between police and residents at the Rochelle Manor Apartments.
It confirms that the officers told residents they were responding to a report of an armed man at the complex when they approached a group of children and took the teen for the possible suspect. Two younger children, ages 8 and 11 at the time, watched the incident.
"I'm gonna give you some advice for the rest of your life," one of the officer tells the teen after police remove the handcuffs, let him brush himself off and tell him to sit down.
"If a police officer thinks that somebody has a gun and that person runs from them ... they have to make sure. OK? They got to make sure that that person doesn't have a gun before they do anything else," the officer says.
The boy says they were playing tag.
The city posted the footage on YouTube. It includes seven body-cam recordings and two recordings from nearby security cameras.
Officer Z.B. Starritt was suspended without pay for one day by the Durham Police Department following an internal investigation of the incident, said Durham City Attorney Kimberly Rehberg.
No other officers were disciplined, she said.
"I think that it's ridiculous that it took damn near two months for them to release the video," said Makeba Hoffler, the mother of the youngest child who saw the incident. "The body camera video should have been released ASAP," she said.
"That video showed the fear that my whole neighborhood had that day," Hoffler said.
"My son, our kids are still going to therapy for this," she said. "It's not going to stop playing in their heads what they went through that day."
Hoffler said police officials did not apologize after the incident. "Now we want no apology," she said.
Hoffler said she plans to file formal complaint against the department and is looking for a lawyer.
"We, as the community, was wronged," she said. "If they don't stop with us, it might happen again and it might be worse."
Police Chief C.J. Davis said soon after the incident that the officers were responding to a 911 call and said she felt remorse for what happened, The News & Observer has reported.
"Upon their arrival, Durham police officers believed an individual behind the building was the suspect. It was not until the young man was detained that officers realized he was not the suspect, but rather, a 15-year-old resident of Rochelle Manor," Davis wrote in a Facebook post Aug. 30.
The incident led to a protest Sept. 4, with protesters asking the department to release the video and 911 call to the public.
The City Council posted the footage online as a follow up to a closed court hearing held Monday, according to a city news release.
The city wanted to release the video sooner, but state statutes require a court order to release law enforcement recordings to the public. An attorney for the officers, Daniel Meier, had argued it should wait until after the Police Department finished its internal review of the incident.
The department finished its review in October, and Meier and a city attorney sent a consent order for the release of the footage to the Superior Court judge presiding over issue a week ago, said Rehberg.
The judge signed the consent order Oct. 30, and council members met in a closed session the following Monday afternoon, Nov. 2, to discuss the footage, Rehberg said. They chose to release the recordings the next day.
The recordings show that as the officers walked back through the parking lot after the incident, the teenager's mother approaches them.
The same officer who had talked to the boy tells his mother why they had drawn guns on him.
"He's a kid," the mother says.
"We don't know him," the officer says.
"He don't know y'all! That's what I'm saying," she says. "Don't y'all look more threatening than this little boy?"
After a few more exchanges, the officer says he is sorry.
"I apologize that we had to go through this," he says.
The mother says her son was afraid of him and that she hopes the officer's son goes through the same experience as her son.
"Y'all gotta realize what y'all are doing, are scaring the (expletive) out of these people, to the point where they react in a bad way," she says. "Because I always, I conditioned my child."
As the officers walk away, the first woman who had talked to the officers during the incident asks for their badge numbers. One officer provides his number.
