Last April when 29-year-old mom Tyeesha Mobley caught her youngest son stealing a ten dollar bill from her purse, she decided to teach him an important life lesson and hopefully keep him from seeing the inside of a jail cell in the future by calling the police. Little did she know that that phone call would result not only in her being arrested and allegedly beaten by the police, but her children being abused in foster care. What went so terribly wrong?
According to Tyeesha Mobley, once she made the 911 call, four police officers responded and she met them at a nearby gas station with her children.
"Three of them was joking around with my son," Mobley told The Huffington Post. One of the officers told her four-year-old son, Keyshawn, that he would "end up in the police car if he kept stealing."
The fourth officer, however, seemed to be irate about the situation.
"You need to call the kids' father, not us," he added. "We can't raise your kids. Why are you wasting our time? We aren't here to raise your kid. Why don't you take your f--king kid and leave?!"
Would this guy have said that to a white woman under any circumstance?? I think not.
Tyeesha Mobley attempted to do just that, leading Tyleke, 9, and Keyshawn back to their apartment.
But this guy wasn't finished.
"Oh, where do you think you're going?" Tyeesha says the officer yelled before grabbing her arm and handcuffing her wrists. Mobley asked why she was be being arrested, to which the officer allegedly responded, "If you're going to say another f--king word I'm going to knock your teeth down your throat."
These are the types of stories that most White Americans never hear and when they do hear them they don't believe them and this type of thing continues to happen over and over again to Black and Latino people.
The reasons why they don't tend to believe these stories is because this type of thing will never happen to them. It is unfathomable....It is not part of their reality...But it happens in the ghetto and the barrio often enough that I am not surprised when I do hear it.
I'm not anti-cop...Not in the least bit..I know that a cops job is difficult...Everyday they put their lives on the line for a mostly unappreciative public...They're damned if they do,damned if they don't. I believe that the great majority of policemen are good guys who really do protect and serve....
Unfortunately...there are always your bad apples...your assholes who make all of the good cops, the truly good cops...look bad..
The story continues...
The two boys watched their mom arrested; being thrown against the police car with her legs were kicked.
At that time a female officer drove to the scene, rolled down her window and cried out to Mobley's aggressor, "We are not supposed to act like this."
His response: "Black b--ches like that. This is how I treat them."
Later, Mobley was transported from the jail to the hospital to treat the bruises on her legs.
Due to the pending lawsuit, the NYPD will not comment on the arrest, but Mobley's lawyer, Philip Sporn, told The Huffington Post that she was charged with child endangerment. That charge was ultimately dismissed months later, but far too late for Tyeesha and her boys who were taken into custody by The Administration for Child Services and turned over to a foster parent.
The lawsuit alleges that during one of her supervised visits with her children, Mobley witnessed the foster mother "forcibly and violently strike, shove, and push Keyshawn through a doorway when it seemed that no one was watching."
The suit also places blame on the foster mother, who spoke only Spanish, for an injury that Keyshawn suffered while in her care. Allegedly, his right hand was "horribly burned" and the wound was never treated at a hospital.
At first this had all the makings of one of those "See, not all cops are bad" stories that were being pushed in the wake of Ferguson. But what were those three other officers doing while Mobley was being arrested and assaulted?
Now I ask you again...Would any of this have happened if Tyeesha Mobley weren't black? She doesn't seem to think so. I don't either.
"I didn't commit any crime. I believe that the officer didn't like black people."
"I just didn't want my kids getting incarcerated," Mobley said, explaining why she placed the 911 call that April day. "The one person who I thought would help me turned their backs on me." But maybe there were a few others who turned their backs on Tyeesha and her sons long before those officers did.
As painstakingly hard as it is to agree with someone who seems to be filled with so much hate, where were the other people in Tyeesha's life who probably could've helped to get through to her son, without getting the police involved? Because if anything, as good as her intentions may have been, she appears to have been blind to the plight of black men and their relationship with police over the years.
Maybe she was being optimistic, but unfortunately, her story has only built more distrust in a struggle that doesn't seem to be improving anytime soon. Especially when many people's first reaction to her story was to question why she trusted the police to handle the situation at all.
I wonder what message this sent to her sons? You think they're going to forget this?
Perhaps the 911 call wasn't necessary. Maybe it was both the wrong place and the wrong time (and maybe a little much for a ten dollar bill out of her own purse). But were the four police officers called to the scene necessary?
What was is that Tyeesha Mobley said to the 911 operator to get that kind of response?
And what the hell were the other three officers doing as Tyeesha was being arrested?
Will the fourth officer even be punished for his bad behavior? And how did she manage to get charged with child endangerment when she was clearly just trying to do her best as mother to mold her son into a responsible young man?
Questions that will never be answered....
Tyeesha and her sons were reunited last summer. The boys are in school and Ms.Mobley says the entire family is also in therapy after having suffered the trauma from the arrest and the four months that they were forced to spend apart.
To say that Tyeesha Mobley's view of the police is damaged after her ordeal would be a vast understatement.
The 29-year-old says that these days, she walks in the other direction when she sees an officer on the street; viewing them as "someone out to harm me."
Her hope is that the lawsuit that she filed in the Bronx Supreme Court will at least let the city know how her family was "destroyed." One could also hope that much more is taken away from this case...for all sides.
The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.
1 comment:
What a terrible thing to happen to children and a mother!! I'm sure she'll win the lawsuit and I hope they get out of NY!!
I do ask what you asked? Where was the Daddy, the Poppop?? Any uncles around? Or even the current boyfriend? What man was helping this woman raise these boys? As powerful and strong as women can be, we need men to make AND raise children. One person, male or female, can't raise a child. It takes a village!! (Cause sometimes you need to saddle up, make a posse and ride over to kick somebody's ...)
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