He was beaten to death by his mother's (using that word VERY loosely) boyfriend last weekend and his father's family claims that both the police and DCFS were contacted in the months and weeks immediately prior to his murder.

The story is disturbing all the way around, but what particularly struck me was the part where the father brought the baby to the police department in order to report the bruises on his body and he was basically threatened. It sounds like the father, though young, was essentially a responsible father and member of society. He was not some drug dealing lowlife, he had a steady job as a baggage handler and loved his little boy very much. In fact it was his desire to do things the "right" way that tragically led things to unfold the way they did.

Now, I don't usually like to bring race into things, but for some reason in this case I feel that there is a strong possibility that race played a role in what happened. And maybe not just race, but also the age of the father.

Think about it, if he had been a middle-aged white man and he had walked into that police station, do you think he would have been treated the way he was? And if he had, as a middle aged white man he would probably have been enraged by his treatment and demanded to speak to a superior. But, as a young black man I'm sure the fear of having the police not believe him and maybe even somehow turn this around on him was ever-present. Whether rightly or not, I think that many young black men in the US fear the police even if they are not doing anything wrong. Especially in Los Angeles. And maybe that's what happened here?

It makes perfect sense if you look at it through the lens of a young black man in LA, why he didn't push the police once they made it clear they did not believe him. As another commenter noted, this really could have been the moment when it all unraveled...sad..

I don't really have a point. I just found this story to be so incredibly sad...it's unimaginable to me that someone could look into this baby's big beautiful eyes and harm a single hair on his head. I pray for his father and that God will give him some measure of peace - though I'm sure he will be forever haunted by what he might have done to save his son. I hope that someday he will believe none of this is his fault. He did everything right and the system failed him.

I really feel like the failures here fall on the shoulders of Hawthorne police department, DCFS and of course the mother and her scumbag boyfriend.

I'm sure that the last two will rot in hell. I hope sooner, rather than later.

Labels: Criminals, News