You could be mistaken for thinking that a child would be able to walk down the street with his family without getting the police called on them.
But for many black people in America, this simply is not the case as a nine-year-old boy from Brooklyn found out earlier this week.
The boy was walking along with his family when a white woman claimed he touched her inappropriately and subsequently phoned the police.
You can watch the moment it happens here:
*Make this go viral*Meet Cornerstore CarolineWhite Woman calls police on a kid, saying he sexually assaulted her.As I walked up I noticed the argument, apparently the kid brushed up against her and she said he touched her and decided to call police on a nine year old child. As you can see the kid is crying and the mom is upset.
Posted by Jason Stovetop Littlejohn on Wednesday, 10 October 2018
Facebook user Jason Stovetop Littlejohn posted the now viral video to Facebook on Wednesday (October 10), after witnessing the incident.
He wrote:
*Make this go viral*. Meet Cornerstore Caroline. White Woman calls police on a kid, saying he sexually assaulted her.
As I walked up I noticed the argument, apparently the kid brushed up against her and she said he touched her and decided to call police on a nine year old child. As you can see the kid is crying and the mom is upset.
The woman can be heard on the phone saying ‘I want the cops here now’, resulting in the young boy and his even younger sister to burst into tears, crying ‘mummy, mummy’.
This is #CornerstoneCaroline she is calling the police because a 9 year old black kid touched her by accident. You know the drill, let's identify this POS. Oh and white folks, really!! 😠 retweet please so we can out this bigot. pic.twitter.com/FZeSyDt5Bu
— The end is near.. (@TrumpsLilSecret) October 12, 2018
This doesn’t deter the woman – dubbed ‘Cornerstore Caroline’ by the poster in reference to other strikingly similar incidents in which white women have called the police on black people (think: Permit Patty and Barbeque Becky) – who continues to demand police presence, telling the family they are just round the corner.
She can be then be heard telling the person on the phone:
White lady calling the cops on a black lady, I get it. Yeah, they’re video-taping.
At this point, passers-by are intervening and trying to comfort the family, who are obviously distressed by this incident.
The woman continues to shout loudly on the phone though, telling the officers:
That’s right, the son grabbed my ass and she decided to yell at me.
She goes on to mention that the shop they are standing outside of has security cameras, refusing to back down despite many witnesses stepping in and questioning her behaviour, telling her to ‘go home’.
The boy continues to cry as the woman waves to the camera, informing everyone that officers will be arriving soon.
When the crowd raises their voices, the woman shouts:
I was just sexually assaulted by a child.
This angers the growing crowd even more, with one woman screaming at her and calling her a paedophile. Tensions are high and continue to rise when the woman refuses to put down the phone.
The video quickly went viral and at the time of writing had been shared more than 100,000 times, and had 19K comments.
Many people expressed their anger at the woman:
I’m at a loss of words. Those kids are traumatized by her vileness. Disgusting.
If you’re being an asshole, the community is allowed to tell you as such, no matter what age. Being older is not a pass to be able to display petty, poor human behavior, sorry about it. You can’t throw that card randomly.
As scared as black boys and men are of the police these days thinking any form of contact with them will cost them they life, and she wants this 9 yr old child to feel that fear. How dare she. I hope and pray she don’t have kids.
Whilst others sympathised with the little boy:
That poor little boy. I practically cried for him he was genuinely scared.
Poor kid is so upset thinking the police are coming for him.
It is not known whether the police did show up in the end, but the Facebook user posted a follow-up video showing the woman walking away with no sign of the police.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).