Days After Arresting Seven-year-old Boy, Police
Arrest His Mother
Sun., Mar. 25, 2007 /Baltimore news
By Mike Shea and Devon Brown
“He handcuffed me to a bench, and then he started asking me questions. … and they took my picture and they mug shot me, and they hand printed me.”
Less than two weeks ago, Baltimore City police arrested seven-year-old Gerard Mungo, Jr. and took him to jail. This Saturday, a short time after a noon rally in support of the boy and his family, police arrested his mother, Lakisia Dinkins, in a bizarre turn of events that many suspect was retaliation or an attempt to intimidate her for speaking out about the incident.
Background: Arrest of Boy
On March 13, Mungo, a first grader, was on the sidewalk near the front of his East Baltimore row house sitting on a small motorized dirt bike when he was confronted by police officers.
“They jumped out on him and snatched him off of the bike,” said Dinkins. “The bike wasn’t running—wasn’t on. He was just pushing it up and down the block.”
The officers initially took the boy to the Eastern District police station.
“He was handcuffed to a bench the whole time. …one hand cuffed to the bench, one hand cuffed to his wrist for like an hour and a half,” said the boy’s father Gerard Mungo, Sr.
“He’s not like most seven-year-olds. My seven-year-old, he’s amazing to me,” said Dinkins.
She says that while most kids like to watch cartoons, listen to music and play video games, her son prefers to watch educational shows, read books and even do homework.
“He’ll go into his book bag, pull out some old work … and go over the old work and finish the work he didn’t get a chance to complete in school. That’s the type of seven-year-old I have.”
Rally
Saturday’s rally, at the corner of Gay and Federal Streets, was called by the Baltimore branch of the NAACP to support little Gerard and his family.
Branch president Marvin “Doc” Cheatham told the crowd, “This has to be the issue that’ll wake us up. They’re at our children. Four men justified doing what they did. There’s a culture of white supremacy in the police department. It’s plain and simple that we’re saying we’re gonna pull the covers from over it, we’re gonna call it like it is, and if it starts from Hamm on down, you’re gonna have to go.”
Greta Carter, whose 14-year-old son was shot to death by police last summer said, “We have to continue to stick together as a people, because if you don’t stick together they will try to divide and conquer as they have tried to do to this family—tried to destroy their family, asking for her social security number. You don’t need a social security number to take a report.”
“When you traumatize a seven-year-old like that—then what they’ve done, they’ve traumatized our entire community. When they tell a seven-year-old that you shouldn’t tell what we did … if you do we’re gonna come back and lock up your mom and your dad, imagine the pain you put in a child’s brain…” said Daren Muhammad.
Arrest of Mother
Incredibly, in what police maintain was a unrelated incident, Dinkins was arrested at her sister's house around the corner shortly after the rally. After the rally, but before her arrest, we followed Dinkins to her home to interview her. Next, we went to the Eastern District police station to try to get some footage there. They told us we could not video tape inside. We wouldn’t find this out until later, but Dinkins had already been detained, saw us asking for permission to video tape, and was trying to get our attention from a side room. Shortly after we left, also unbeknownst to us, Cheatham and Muhammed arrived at the Eastern District having been notified of Lakisia’s arrest.
“We had a rally today at 12 noon to show the family love, to let them know that the injustice that had happened to them was wrong, but at the same time we wanted the community to know that they needed to be outraged… Well, later on this afternoon I get a phone call indicating that Lakisia had in fact been arrested…” said Cheatham.
“Myself and Marvin “Doc” Cheatham received a phone call from the family. We went over to investigate. We talked to numerous officers at the Eastern District and while we were there we did see Miss Dinkins. [Cheatham] asked that they release her into custody of the NAACP. They were charging her with hindering an arrest,” said Muhammed.
“We can only assume that this was retaliation—that evidently they were watching her, following her, and decided this is what they were going to do,” said Cheatham.
Later Dinkins was moved to Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center.
Release of Mother
When Dinkins was released from Central Booking and Intake Center at about 10:15 p.m. she ran to her son and they embraced. She then described how she had been singled out by the police.
“… the officer said ‘well who’s the mother of the seven-year-old?’ That’s when they pointed me out, and then he went outside and told the other officer, ‘Guess who we got inside: the mother of the seven-year-old little boy that was arrested for riding the dirt bike.’ That’s when he came in and he asked me to have a seat, so when I went to go pull up a chair he grabbed me by the back of my jacket and slammed me down in the chair, and told me that I’m under arrest, [that] I coming with him for hindering,” she said.
WJZ reported that the police department indicated that “unlike the incident involving the seven-year-old, this time, the mother did commit a crime.”
"The officers calmly tried to explain why they were inside the home, but she became very belligerent, yelling, screaming, gave several racial slurs towards one of the officers," said Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman.
However, when we asked whether she had been given any charging documents Dinkins said no, displayed an “Application for Expungement When No Charge is Filed” and said, “They gave me this and told me, ‘fill it out and mail it in so it could be expunged.”
“We have a large number of good officers, but if you got good officers that are looking the other way when bad officers are doing injustice then they are just as guilty as the ones that are perpetrating these injustices,” said Cheatham.
“There are some good officers in Baltimore City let’s be clear on that. … If they’re wearing blue suits and they’re doing what they’ve done, they’re wrong. We don’t care if they’re black, white, brown, red or yellow.”
Supporters of the family have scheduled another rally for Tuesday, March 27 at 5 p.m. in front of Baltimore City Police headquarters at 601 E. Fayette St.
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