The Kid Got Off Easy': Blaze Readers React to Video of Cop Who Appears to Smack 10-Year-Old Boy

(Credit: LiveLeak)

TheBlaze posted a story earlier this week about a video of a police officer appearing to smack a 10-year-old boy in the head.

The event took place when police were responding to a child-custody issue in Eugene, Ore., and the boy bit the police officer. Here's what some readers of TheBlaze had to say about the issue:

AvengerK

Let’s see if I got this right…the child has been living with his mother- against a court order and is illiterate because she hasn’t sent him to school (oh look..another single mother success story)….and we’re worried about a little smack across the skull when the feral kid bit the cop? Seriously? It’s probably the first discipline the kid’s seen in his short 10 years.

michael48

I was 10 years old in the 50s….the kid got off easy, back then I’d have gotten a whipping from every Dad on the block…the mother would have gone to jail. Telling the child to run is just INSANE and borders on child endangerment...(ie: run in front of a car).

KevINtampa

If you look at my post history, I’m one of the first to call out unnecessary and illegal use of authority by law enforcement officials. Had a SWAT team been used to collect this child, you would be reading a different comment, but this time the cop got it right.

If you bite somebody, you must expect them to respond. He smacked a kid that deserved a smack. If he had shot him, tased him, maced him, or beat him, that would have set me off. A smack is not a beating. Smacking him though seems to me a pretty even and just response to being bitten. What is he supposed to do, walk around with an out-of-touch-with-reality ten year old chewing on his arm all the way back to his cruiser?

CapnCrumbles32

Kid deserves a few more smacks, along with every one of the adults there. No respect for authority anymore; it's disgusting. I'm all for calling it out if the law oversteps its bounds, but as it stands there are a LOT of disrespectful and disorderly people running around. Notice the hippie in the tie-died shirt tries to confront the cop in the park, having no idea what happened. God bless the cops for keeping their cool. I couldn’t do it.

Captain Crunch

Unless the mother was abusing the child there is no justifiable reason for the Gestapo to be involved here. Just because their living standards don’t meet some of your expectations does not justify the authorities taking the child. As America slips further into a third-world Banana Republic we are going to see more poor people, more illiterate people. So when you find yourself in poverty living in a bus, or maybe a box under a bridge, let's see you tell your raggedy dressed hungry children to go willingly with the Gestapo and submit….You’ll be telling them to run, too. Run and bite the hand that grabs you.

Monst3r

I like how some libertarians are so far down the road in these posts, some commons sense is just beyond them. I consider myself a libertarian/conservative, and a small-government guy, but the court orders are something the police don’t decide on per se. Nobody has any idea why the kid was ordered to no longer be in her custody, and if it was a legit argument for her having the kid, she would have him by now or be fighting to KEEP him.

Second, the kid bit the cop. You can see him react when he reaches down to smack/push his head away. The cop was in the right to do so, if not just for an instinctual reaction to it. I have no problem with the crowd really, they have a right to be there as long as they aren’t interfering directly. That kid who was making threats to kill people, and blow up buildings with C4 deserves some time in a cell, since clearly his parents don’t care about him and don’t teach him to not be a complete turd of a young adult.

LDSmommy

I’m in Oregon, too. Eugene and Portland are the plague of the state. They get an unfair amount of say-so in our government and ruin it for the rest of us.

DHS/Child Services in this state…atrocious. It is totally out of control and children are taken from families at an alarming rate. Taken for guns being in the house, house is too messy, child claims abuse (before investigating, they take the child. Then it takes YEARS to get them back). A few years ago, a group of teens from a recently immigrated family asked to go out during the week. Dad said “no.” Kids left from the window, went out and got drunk, THEN calls DHS to claim dad was abusive. After 4 years, he got them back with a letter saying the accusations were unfounded. Nothing else. Too bad.

Obviously, this kid needs help desperately, but after working in the system for a long time, I can understand the reactions of others. I feel bad for the kid and the cop just doing his job. Mom can take a flying leap…another woman making up sex-abuse stories to keep her kid away from the man SHE CHOSE to have a child with. Happens every day.

Truthbeliever2

I disagree with most here. First off, he’s 10 years old. He’s caught right in the middle of a custody battle between his mother and father. He’s upset and confused. Maybe you could cut the kid a little slack with what he is having to go through at such a young age. Whether or not it was for his own good he obviously wanted to stay with his mother.

He’s a little bitty skinny twig of a kid who could have easily been restrained without being smacked in the head, cheek whatever. Tell me something: how hard was the officer squeezing his little twig of an arm and how hard did he smack him? You don’t know because you weren’t there.

The Giver

Just because they live in a trailer park does not mean they are “trash." The mother said that the guy was not the biological father and is into kid porn (maybe not true), but don’t go siding with someone’s child being taken away because you don’t agree with how they are being raised. Someone may not agree how you are raising your child. Not going to a government school is all of a sudden a bad thing here? They were cursing, yes, but declaring their Constitutional rights also. She thanked them for their terrorism.

These are human beings too. Our Lord Christ Jesus was born in a stable.

There are many cool people in trailer parks who don’t get government help. It is so cheap you actually have more freedom. That “bus” probably had a bathroom and kitchen. Some apartments in Manhattan are the size of a closet. Live and let live fellow libertarians. She said they had just given socks and food to some folks. When was the last time all the judges here have done that? Judge yourself.

The cops showed class here. It could have gone terribly wrong, but their calm and working as a pack worked beautifully. You take a child from his mother, and it can turn bad quickly.

Cavallo

Tasing would have been excessive. (I know you were probably being facetious). I think swatting the little brat was good enough. I’d let it go at that. Make too much of a case out of it, and they could charge the kid with assaulting a police officer. Also excessive would have been a take-down and a choke-hold like other cops have done. When you find a cop who doesn’t resort to the maximum amount of force available, and seems to use common sense, we should applaud him. Hopefully common-sense cops will then start to stand up to some of their more psychotic militaristic brethren.

Slice_Of_Life

The conduct and restraint shown by these police officers is amazing. They were simply enforcing a court order issued by a judge in their district-the officers had no choice but to comply with the order. The feral ‘child’ is Exhibit A confirming the judge made the proper decision. I truly hope the brass of Eugene Police Department gives the officers a well-deserved pat on the back and commendation for their professionalism. There was nothing contained in the video that shines a negative light on the officers~the mouthy bystanders, including the vulgar ‘children’, are another matter. Eugene Police Department – I salute you. Thank you for serving and protecting your respective community.

quovadis

Ah Eugene. Lived there 15 years. Worked for law enforcement.

This police officer showed great restraint. There is always more to the story than is what is reported, especially in child-custody cases. And it is always the police who are called to clean up the mess created by the parents (who probably shouldn’t have procreated in the first place).

The police there are always under scrutiny because of the communist/secularist/anarchist mindset fostered by decades of Grateful Deadhead tie-die U of O graduates and card-carrying commie profs now retiring baby-boomer types. Never a year goes by that someone doesn’t try to sue the police for something.

When college is back in session, the town looks forward to the riots and destruction caused by college brats who never had their butts whipped by their rich self-absorbed parents. This is anarchist heaven, where one can find more anarchy groups who can’t figure out what to agree upon. Let’s not forget the anti-government types who form paramilitary groups and the environmentalists who worship the earth and everything wacked out and weird and tried to implement Agenda 21 with the help of the local power company.

Yes, Eugene in the summer time and all the time.

Your ideal progressive community.

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