A video showing a Texas police officer comforting a crying little girl after she asked him if he was going to shoot her at a Houston protest has gone viral. Five-year-old Simone was protesting peacefully with her parents when she caught sight of the officer and got scared of what he might to do her and her family.
During the protest in Houston yesterday one of the police officers noticed my daughter crying. She asked him “Are you gonna shoot us” he got down on one knee wrapped his arm around her and responded: pic.twitter.com/gQWF7HMf3l
— SimeonB 🦉 (@iamsimeonb) June 3, 2020
- The video is bittersweet. While it was good to see the officer kneel down to Simone’s level and put his arm around her as he gave her words of comfort, it’s more striking that a 5-year-old girl has to be so terrified by the mere sight of police that it immediately reduces her to tears and fear for her life.
- I’m not even sure his words were that encouraging. “We’re here to protect you, okay? We’re not here to hurt you at all. You can protest, you can party, you can do whatever you want – just don’t break nothing,” the officer can be heard telling her. So what, if she broke something, then she might get shot? I’m probably reading too much into that, but given all that’s been happening…
- Hopefully Simone did find some comfort in his words. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that kids know that it’s not only their right to protest unfair treatment of black people (or anyone else) but that they’re going to be safe doing so. Regardless of what anyone thinks of the police officer’s gesture, hopefully his words had the intended effect of providing her with a bit of comfort and security.
- Of course, this situation proves just how important this fight is. The fact that a little girl is so aware of how dangerous it is to be black in America proves just how much we need to keep fighting against the system that makes that so.