Dionne Holliday and Kevin Christmon are Montgomery County Police Department officers. According to a lawsuit brought by Maryland mother Shanta Grant, the two officers berated and abused her 5-year-old son after he walked out of school at 1:30 PM on Jan. 14, 2020. According to reports, the child left East Silver Spring Elementary School and had walked one block when the two officers came upon him and proceeded to berate him, scare him, bring him back to school, berate him and manhandle him some more, and repeatedly threaten to beat him while also telling his mother to beat him.
For months, Montgomery City Council member Will Jawando called for the release of video of the incident. Jawando has been a champion for getting rid of the practice of stationing police officers in schools. On March 26, 2021, the video showing the incident through one of two officers’ body cameras was finally released. The 51-minute video suggests that the lawsuit is very much warranted, but the fact that these two officers continue to work for the Montgomery County Police Department is something else that merits investigation. The incident has also brought up questions surrounding the school and its inability to protect the child from—and in fact be complicit in—some very real trauma.
The video shows Officers Christmon and Holliday scream in the child’s face repeatedly, talk openly about the need for more parents to hit their children, and say things like, “I hope your momma let me beat you,” and even handcuff the 5-year-old as a lesson. Throughout the video, the officers alternate with various levels of punishing behavior toward the 5-year-old, rhetorically attacking him by asking, “Does your mama spank you? Does your mama spank you? She’s going to spank you today,” and screaming directly in the child’s face when he doesn’t stop crying.
When Grant arrives, the officers repeatedly tell her she needs to “beat” and “spank” her son. At one point the child is thankfully separated from the police officers while they speak with his mother in another room. But this doesn’t end the threatening and all-around terrible role these police officers have decided to take in this child’s life. Upon returning, Officer Holliday can be heard telling the child, “I don’t like bad children, disrespectful children. I think they need to be beaten, and that’s what I told your momma.”
The union representing Montgomery County police officers released a statement saying that while they believe that “the event could have been handled better by all involved,” their officers “do not receive specific training to address events like the one that occurred on January 14, 2020.” The video makes it clear that these officers need more than “training” on how to “communicate” with children. They need lessons in how to communicate to human beings and should probably not be allowed near schools. And if you should not be allowed near schools or around children, the next logical step is that you should not be allowed to be a police officer.
The police department says that a year-long investigation took place but under Maryland law, the findings of the investigation are private. What is known is that neither officer seems to have received any form of punishment, and both continue to “remain employed as sworn officers for the department.”
A lawyer for the mother suing Montgomery County, Montgomery County Public Schools, and Montgomery County Police explained it as simply as possible, saying, “You don’t have to be a social worker or licensed counselor to know how to approach a child like this.”
WARNING: The videos below are very rough to watch.