Video Shows NYPD Harassing Little Boy Eating At A Restaurant With His Family For Not Being Vaccinated
The video is hard to watch.
Twitter People on Twitter are up in arms with the NYPD over several viral videos going around, showing the police harassing and arresting people in New York over vaccine passport problems.
With the omicron variant of COVID-19 on the rise, New York has been cracking down on their vaccine mandates and have started arresting people that don’t have their Excelsior Pass in order.
One especially hard-to-watch video shows police removing a little boy and his family from a restaurant.
The NYPD Strategic Response Group showed up at an unnamed restaurant and started asking people for their vaccination passports before settling on one table where the allegedly 5-year-old boy sat with his family.
According to the new strictest-in-the-nation vaccine mandates in New York, all private employers in New York City must require evidence of COVID-19 inoculation from all workers and have documentation ready for city inspection.
New York City is also requiring anyone aged 12 and up to now show proof of full vaccination to eat indoors at restaurants or enter other indoor venues, like movie theaters, gyms or arenas, with kids aged 5 to 11 only needing to show proof of at least one vaccination dose.
While omicron rages on, New York City mayor Bill De Blasio said the mandate was a necessary preemptive strike against the triple threat of omicron, but it’s hard to believe when NYPD is seen harassing families inside of restaurants.
“She just came here saying that she can’t serve otherwise if you’re not a patron with the card,” said the NYPD officer. “But if you don’t have it then you’re going to have to leave.”
A crowd had built up as a result of the commotion, and the viral video came from one of the passersby filming, watching and throwing insults at the NYPD officers whom the crowd believed were in the wrong.
“You need to leave right now,” continued the police officer to the woman sitting at the table across from the child, who seemingly asked for a minute before leaving, before the officer responded with, “No no, you had a minute. You’re not going to stay here.”
The little boy, visibly distressed, headed over to the woman sitting across from him before the officer asked if he came in with a jacket and told him he needed to leave.
“Wow. Scaring a child. Traumatizing a child,” says the woman who is either filming or next to the person filming. “Hope you feel good about yourself NYPD. This is disgusting. This is gross.”
Another woman, likely the boy’s mother, came back to the table and grabbed him, holding him while he started to cry, before putting him down moments later to get his jacket on in preparation to leave the restaurant.
The Strategic Response Group officer then started talking over some sort of speaker or megaphone, and addresses the crowd at the restaurant.
“Unless you have vaccination cards, you have to exit the restaurant, all right?” he said. “If you leave voluntarily, there will be no charges pressed against you; otherwise, you will be arrested for trespassing. This is your only warning, please.”
This follows a string of similar crackdowns that the NYPD have done in order to enforce the vaccine mandates and the Excelsior Pass.
Around 7:30 p.m. on December 27, after the implementation of the new mandates, anti-vax protesters stormed a Burger King in downtown Brooklyn before five were arrested and the non-vaccinated were removed from the premises.
According to the police, they were all charged with trespassing and remaining unlawfully inside the Burger King.
Omicron has quickly become the dominant variant of the coronavirus and has caused many concerns across the country over fears of another lockdown like in March 2020.
While local and federal governments try to tackle the issue of not spreading the new variant like wildfire, local citizens worry whether or not this is the right approach.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.