Last month, as five young black boys in Grand Rapids, Mich., were walking home from a local rec center, where they had been playing basketball, they were swarmed by local police, who drew their guns, and held them at gunpoint for over 10 minutes, as the boys wailed in fear and confusion. The incident happened nearly a month ago, but the body camera footage was just released.

The situation is awful.

The boys are 12 to 14 years old, and had absolutely no idea what was going on.

“I don’t want to die,” one boy cried out to the officers.

“Can you please put your guns down?” pleaded another boy.

Through it all you can hear the gut-wrenching sobs of one of the boys as he is gripped with fear.

A fight had broken out in the city earlier that day, March 24. One of the witnesses claimed he saw a young man in that fight drop a gun. When police later saw these young boys walking home, the cops claimed the boys matched the earlier descriptions.

That was, it appears, all police needed to scare these kids for the rest of their lives. After swarming and surrounding the boys with guns drawn, the police then handcuffed each of the boys and put them in the backs of their police cars.

None of the boys were armed — and police later admitted that these boys were not the suspects they were looking for. Everything about how this went down was wrong, but from the very beginning the police on the scene seemed to believe they were providing the community with a great service.

They weren’t.

First and foremost — these kids didn’t do anything wrong. And it’s unclear if the young man involved in the earlier fight actually had a gun at all. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. Whatever the case, these five kids weren’t in that fight and were completely unarmed. To force all of them into a terrifying situation based on one unconfirmed report is a uniquely black experience. If such incidents happen in white communities, where elementary- and middle school-aged boys walking home from the park get swarmed by police at gunpoint, I’ve never heard about them. But this happens to black folk in America every single day.

Secondly, many of the boys who were held at gunpoint by police aren’t even close to matching any descriptions given by an eyewitness. The others had on clothes that were so common that half of the young black boys in Grand Rapids could’ve been suspects.

For the full story visit: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/king-cops-held-5-innocent-black-boys-gunpoint-caused-harm-article-1.3094683