SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A mother demanded answers Monday after she says her 11-year-old son was chased, tackled and bloodied by California State Fair officers during the fair’s Kids Day. The incident on Tuesday, July 19, brings up fresh allegations of racism and excessive force from officers.
Elk Grove’s Cynthia Martin said at a news conference just outside the Cal Expo gates Monday her son was horsing around with friends outside of a State Fair roller coaster. That horseplay led fair police to chase down and injure the 11-year-old before questioning him for more than 30 minutes and forcing him to sign a no-trespassing agreement without his parents present.
“My child is not the same. He’s withdrawn. He’s scared,” Martin said.
Martin’s son stood near her side, his head bowed at times and his hands shoved deep into his jeans pockets. The family was accompanied by Tanya Faison of Black Lives Matter Sacramento and civil rights attorney Mark Merin.
“He’s 11 years old. He’s a child. What makes him different from any other 11-year-old? I’ll tell you. He’s Black. A Black male,” Sacramento NAACP president Betty Williams told reporters. “It doesn’t matter your age when it comes to society and law enforcement. You are treated differently and he should never have been treated this way.”
Merin has filed a tort claim, precursor to a federal civil lawsuit against California State Fair.
“He’s just a child. They brought him down by choking him. They manhandled him and used force, so immediately there’s false arrest,” Merin told reporters at Cal Expo. “... They obviously used excessive force. Then they took him out of the view of his mother which violates her due process. This puts Cal Expo on notice that this is a big issue.”
Faison is calling for officers’ body camera and other security video footage. Williams plans to meet with fair executives.
“There is nothing that validates grown men doing what they did to him. There’s no reason to tackle a child,” Faison said. “Any level of injury is unacceptable.”
The incident is the latest involving State Fair law enforcement’s interactions with young Black and brown fairgoers in recent years.
In 2017, two ethnically diverse groups of teenagers said they were racially profiled by State Fair police during opening night before they were ejected from the grounds. One girl suffered a concussion and her thumb fractured in an encounter with officers.
One of the exchanges in 2017, captured on video, showed a 17-year-old girl tackled to the ground by officers. The girl tackled by fair police believed she was targeted because she and her friends were Black.
In an unrelated incident at the same 2017 fair, a Black teen said police began recording him on a cellphone camera after a fight between two other teenagers, then followed him as he walked away. The officer soon called additional officers, one of whom shoved him toward the exit.
“This isn’t the first occasion I’ve been called to try to get justice for someone for an incident at the State Fair,” Merin said.
‘Horseplay’ by boys in ride line
Martin’s son and a group of six friends were in line for a ride at the fair at the end of the fair’s Kids Day.
The group was “horseplaying,” Cynthia Martin said, jockeying to be first in line for the ride. The gate for the ride was closed as riders queued up, but Martin’s son leaped the gate to sit in the front seat of the ride ahead of his friends.
A ride operator kicked him off and told him to leave the ride, according to the family’s four-page claim against the fair. He rejoined his friends and was walking with them toward the exit when he noticed they were being followed by several officers.
“In the neighborhood we live in, most people don’t look like us. His friends don’t look like him. The others have blond hair and blue eyes or brown hair and brown eyes,” Martin said. The officers did not approach his friends, she said.
The 5-foot-3 boy was frightened and ran from the group. The officers chased him down and tackled him to the asphalt. He escaped the first tackle and sprinted toward the gate and his mother, but officers caught up to him. He was again tackled to the ground and then pushed into a gate as fair patrons looked on.
Officers carried the boy away to a security trailer and refused to let his mother inside, she said.
“They slammed the door in my face. No child should be interrogated by police without their parents there,” Martin said. “This was Kids Day, a day when families should be safe coming to the fair and not be terrorized by the police department and assaulted and have visible injuries and visible scars and emotional scars.”
Late night incident at California State Fair
State Fair officials in a statement Monday afternoon said they were “disappointed” by the 11:30 p.m. incident, saying the 11-year-old was unattended and “demonstrating dangerous behavior that put himself and others at risk of severe physical harm, specifically climbing over a safety fence and almost being hit by a roller coaster ride.”
Fair officials said vendors accused the boy of attempting to steal items, according to fair police, and the boy was briefly detained. A small cut was treated with a bandage, fair officials said, and then released to Martin after questioning.
“We believe the Cal Expo Police followed all proper policies to quell the situation and keep the minor safe,” the statement read.
But Martin described a far different scene, telling reporters that she took her son to a local Kaiser Permanente medical center for further treatment.
“He had documented injuries around his neck, hips and stomach area and area of his upper shoulders. He was bleeding from his nose. His shirt was covered in blood,” Martin said. “They knew what they had done.”
