‘Let Him Go!’: New Jersey Cops Detain 13-Year-Old Black Boy for an Hour Over Missing Dog Until Furious Mom Steps in and Demands to See Video
It was over a missing dog that New Jersey police detained a 13-year-old Black boy for an hour, accusing him of “matching the description” of another Black person.
But even after an hour, Delran police still could not say whether he had committed a crime.
“Did he commit a crime?” asked the boy’s mother, Amma Safo-Agyekum, who recorded the video and posted it to Facebook on July 30. The video has since gone viral.
“We don’t know,” an officer responded. “He’s still under investigation.”
‘Show Me the Video’
At no point in the two-minute video did Delran police say they had reasonable suspicion that the boy, Amari Avant, stole the dog.
“He did not commit a crime,” Safo-Agyekum said. “There’s no investigation.”
“Yes, there is an investigation,” an officer responded, adding that police had video evidence.
“Show me the video!” the mother demanded. “Show me the video!”
That was when the officers backed down and decided to leave, telling her they would continue investigating the matter at the police station.
It has been nearly three weeks since she posted the video, and Delran police have not addressed it publicly. The department also did not respond to Atlanta Black Star’s requests for more information.
In an exclusive interview with Atlanta Black Star, Safo-Agyekum said she filed a complaint with the police department and requested body camera footage. She said officials told her it would take about 45 days to provide the footage.
“I’m glad I recorded it and posted it up because we just moved there,” she said.
“We’ve only been there since the end of May, but apparently, looking at all the responses, that department is known, unfortunately, for racist stops and racist behavior.”
Watch video below.
‘I Saw You Earlier Walking the Dog’
Delran police detained Avant on July 29 while he was walking home from football practice, a trip that normally takes about five minutes, his mother said.
She said he was on the phone with his father when an officer in a patrol car stopped and detained him.
“‘I saw you earlier walking a dog,’ and my son was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”
“No, it was you walking the dog,” the officer accused. “I saw you earlier. Where is the dog? What did you do with the dog?” Safo-Agyekum said the officer was “just being belligerent.”
The boy called his mother, who arrived within 20 minutes after telling her son to remain silent. She demanded to know why officers had detained him but said they did not give her any straight answers.
At first, officers told her they were investigating a missing dog, an explanation she said she refused to believe.
“Then their story changed to, ‘Oh, he looked like he was in distress. That’s why I stopped him,’” she said.
“I said, ‘OK, let’s go with that one,’” she said. “I am a nurse. So if it was distress, was he bleeding? No.”
“Did you see any broken bones? No. Did he have difficulty breathing? No. Did you call for an ambulance if you felt like he was in distress? No.”
“‘I am calling out your BS. Where was the distress? Because you didn’t follow through on that either,’” she continued.
The following day, she and the boy’s father went to the police station and watched the body camera video.
“And that kind of made it worse because at one point, there were six officers around my son,” she said.
“Amari’s crying, and I’m like, ‘All this for a dog?’”
‘You’re Going to Traumatize My Kid’
The video begins with a Delran police officer telling the boy’s mother that officers were conducting an “active investigation” into a missing dog.
“You’re going to traumatize my kid, being pulled over by two cops for a dog,” she said. “He told you it’s not his dog. Let him go. Why is he still here?”
The officers did not provide an answer.
If police detained Avant for an hour based only on their claim that he “matched the description,” the detention may have violated his constitutional rights.
“If the arrest lasts longer than the ‘minimally intrusive’ threshold, the stop will be considered a ‘de facto’ arrest and will be held unconstitutional unless supported by full probable cause facts,” according to Hark & Hark, a New Jersey and Pennsylvania law firm citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Sharpe.
“The question is ‘whether the police diligently pursued a means of investigation that was likely to confirm or dispel their suspicions quickly during which time it was necessary to detain the defendant.’”
The video does not show officers taking steps to confirm their suspicion that the boy stole a dog, which may explain why they left after his mother confronted them.
It remains unclear who owned the dog or what happened to it. However, on Aug. 6, the Delran Township Police Department posted a photo of a dog on its Facebook page and said officers had returned the dog to its owner.
On July 29, the day police detained the boy, the department posted a photo of another dog and said officers were “trying to locate the owner.”
Neither post identified a Black person as a suspect in the theft of either dog.