Police brutality has been brought under new light as of late and for that I am grateful. Racial issues regarding this situation have also been covered and it saddens and delights me to see the reactions of others.

It delights me to see more than just black people standing up for the rights of others. It delights me to see people viewing others as actual human beings. It delights me to see humanity in places I’ve been taught it wouldn’t be. But it’s also saddening because some people view it as the victim’s fault. It’s saddening because no matter what happens or how it happened, the thorough criticism of police officers has numbed people to the truth. It’s saddening to think some people don’t know the difference between an abuse of power and a cop actually doing their job correctly.

Upon watching the video of a Stockton teen being beaten by SPD officers at the downtown RTD bus station, I felt my chest tighten. The “crime” was jaywalking and then the reasoning behind the police force was resisting and disrespecting a police officer.

To clarify, jaywalking is not a crime at all. Not even a misdemeanor, but rather an infraction which is also called a “petty offense”. These are classified as the lowest of charges, much like a traffic ticket or littering.

Wasn’t it Sandra Bland who was pulled over for a traffic ticket and then later died in police custody? Shocking.

The maximum punishment for this crime was a 250 dollar fine with no incarceration and no jail time.

Yet, in the video the police officer did not even make a move to pull out a ticket book. This video was taken supposedly after the cop had told the sixteen year old to “take a seat” and the boy had kept walking to his bus and cussed at the officer, saying he wouldn’t do that. The officer grabbed the the boy’s arm, and the young teen had taken it off. The officer also says that the boy had reached for his baton, an act that would put the surrounding public in danger and required him to use “control tactics.” The teen tried to pull the baton away from the officer only after the officer is already on top of him and forcefully using the baton to restrain him.

He called for backup twice because a crowd was gathering, and yet in the video no one was seen to make any move to interfere with this altercation. No one even dared to get near the situation. Only one woman can be heard screaming “He’s just a kid, leave him alone” and “What’s wrong with you?” and even she is off-camera.

The beginning of the video shows the officer on top of the boy in a raised planter, physically struggling with him. This is where the boy was hit in the face twice with the baton. By the time the child was holding his face in pain, sitting on the edge of the raised planter and crying, sirens can distinctly be heard. The officer grabs the boy’s hands from his face and say “get on the ground” to which the boy cries out “don’t touch me”. The one vocal woman in the situation yells “you stay right there, before they try to shoot you.”

Four more officers come to assist in arresting the “resisting” teen. They very forcefully push him down and restrain him, while five more cops watch the crowd and form a barrier from any interference. As the boy is being escorted to a police car by all four officers you can hear him crying.

Some claim that all of this hype is only because the boy was black, so for the sake of my argument, let’s remove that as a factor completely. This was still only an infraction, only punishable by a fine, if even that. I can’t count the times I’ve seen people jaywalk in front of police officers with no reaction whatsoever from either party. So, what was this boy resisting? Not arrest. Perhaps it was because it was a disrespectful teen. We need some respect physically knocked into us, right? By four grown men, right?

As someone who uses the city buses I am even more fearful for myself. People who use the buses don’t always have the best intentions, people anywhere around you can have cruel intentions and I look to police officers to step in if I were ever in danger. I hope that if someone were to assault me, if someone were to attack me that they would do their job and protect me. Sadly, now I have to hope that I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes by crossing the street to get to my connecting bus. I have to hope that a police officer doesn’t see me as defiant because there won’t be anyone to help me in that situation. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be listening to music as I jaywalk and I won’t hear them call me. Maybe they’ll consider my silence as disrespect and decide the best way to knock that out of me is with a baton to the face.