The Omaha Police Officers Association drew criticism this week after it posted a video of a black child in a diaper and titled it “The Thug Cycle.”
A post on the association’s blog explained that the “video is bad” and “will make you angry.”
The video shows an African-American toddler in a diaper and several adults can be heard uttering profanities from off camera.
The association asserted that it had “an obligation to share it to continue to educate the law abiding public about the terrible cycle of violence and thuggery that some young innocent children find themselves helplessly trapped in.”
“Now while we didn’t see anything in this video that is blatantly ‘illegal’, we sure did see a lot that is flat out immoral and completely unhealthy for this little child from a healthy upbringing standpoint,” the association wrote, noting that someone in the room asked the child, “What hood you from?”
“Folks… soak this in,” the post said.
While KMTV picked up the police association’s post as a “warning for everyone,” Black Men United in Omaha Executive Director Willie Hamilton told the Omaha World-Herald that it was unprofessional to call out a child and draw conclusions based on a short Facebook video.
“The police actually have a website that is perpetuating mistrust and anger, and I think that is what it is meant to do,” Hamilton pointed out. “I thought posting the video was crossing the line. To use that incident to say that our kids are going to grow up and be thugs is far-reaching and insensitive. We are talking about a child that hasn’t even gone to school yet.”
“If the police chief is trying to amend the broken relationship with our community, he needs to say, ‘On my watch, I will not allow this kind of behavior,’” he added. “Maybe we should look at how much control the police union has. They shouldn’t be able to use the website as a shield to post these nasty things.”
According to KMTV, the Omaha police department had contacted Child Protective Services to look into the child’s case.
Watch this video from KMTV, broadcast Jan. 5, 2013.
Watch this video from the Omaha Police Officers Association.
























