'Our Officers Are the Victims': Sacramento Police Defend Use of Spit Mask on 12-Year-Old

Sacramento police are defending their use of a clear mesh "spit mask" on a combative 12-year-old boy as irate bystanders videotaped the tense encounter while objecting that the boy was being detained.

Officers "appropriately used a spit mask to protect themselves and defuse the situation," Police Chief Daniel Hahn said in a statement on the April 28 incident. "I am grateful that our officers were willing to proactively intervene when they observed suspicious activity, and that nobody was injured during this encounter.”

In a statement on Thursday, a Sacramento Police Department spokesperson said, "Our officers are the victims. The spit mask is not considered any type of use of force."

On Wednesday, police released officer body-camera video that shows the boy struggling while officers work to calm him.

He repeatedly curses and shouts that he can't breathe after he is handcuffed and placed face-down on the ground, and police pull the mask over his head.

"Hey, hey, you need to calm down, dude. Calm down, OK?" an officer replies.

Police said they spotted the boy running away from a security guard and helped detain the youth. He was later released to his mother and cited for battery against a police officer and resisting arrest.

Sacramento attorney Mark T. Harris said he is considering a lawsuit on behalf of the youth and his mother against the city, the security guard and an employee at a nearby Wienerschnitzel restaurant who he said also helped detain the boy.

Harris heads the Sacramento office of a national civil rights legal firm that also represents the family of Stephon Clark, an unarmed 22-year-old who was killed by Sacramento police a little over a year ago, leading to national protests.

The 12-year-old boy was attending a neighborhood carnival with an adult and his older sister. He went to the car to get change to use at the carnival, when he was confronted by the security guard, Harris said.

"[The boy] showed the security guard the set of keys that he had to prove that he had permission, and the security guard disregarded it and began to chase him," he said.

"To a certain extent, police were victims of this themselves," he said. "They didn't know what was going on."

According to Harris, the problem was the police response. The 12-year-old is 4 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 76 pounds.

"They immediately used force to try to detain the young man. It went very quickly to hands around the neck, hands around the arm," said Harris. "So all of that was inappropriate as far as I'm concerned."

Harris said it's not clear that the boy actually spit, but said that even if he did there was no reason to believe it created a health hazard. Moreover, he said police should have removed the mask after the boy's mother arrived and asked that it be removed because her son has respiratory issues.

"If this were in another part of town, if [he] were anything other than a young African American kid in a very difficult section of Sacramento, this wouldn't have happened in this way," said Harris. "He should have been dealt with a level of respect."

Harris said the officers should have de-escalated the hostilities. Instead, the incident eventually drew eight officers, along with the security guard and restaurant employee, "all of this for a 12-year-old who at worst was accused of asking people for money, which he wasn't doing."

This post includes reporting by Don Thompson of The Associated Press and KQED's Hope McKenney.