In October 2020, police officers and protesters clashed in Philadelphia. The protests were a response to the shooting death of Walter Wallace Jr. by Philadelphia police earlier in the day. Police were responding to reports that the 27-year-old Wallace was having a mental crisis of some kind. Wallace was shot no less than 10 times by officers who were about 10 feet away from him. The shooting took place on the street in front of his mother, and in the wake of national Black Lives Matter protests and calls for serious reform and defunding of national law enforcement, hundreds of Philadelphians were quick to take to the streets to demand justice.

During the protests a 28-year-old Black woman and home health care aide named Rickia Young was driving home late at night with her 2-year-old son in the backseat. She had just picked up a teenager referred to in news reports as her “nephew.” She turned down a street only to realize that a mob of police officers were blocking the end of the street. While she attempted to make a three-point U-turn to leave, cops swarmed the car, bashed the windows, pulled her and the teen out of the vehicle, threw them on the ground, beat them, and then used her toddler son in a social media post as copaganda.

On Tuesday, attorneys for the city and Rickia Young announced that Young will be receiving $2 million from the city of Philadelphia in a settlement over a civil rights lawsuit she filed last year. Mayor Jim Kenney released a statement calling the event “absolutely appalling,” saying “The officers’ inexcusable actions that evening prompted an immediate and thorough investigation of the incident and for personnel to be disciplined and held accountable for their egregious conduct. I hope that the settlement and investigations into the officers’ actions bring some measure of closure to Ms. Young and her family.”

The protests that began on Monday, Oct. 26 lasted through the week, with a heavy police presence at every event. On Thursday of that week, the largest police union in the country, the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), posted a photo on their social media pages of a young female cop seeming to comfort a very young black child. The post was accompanied with text saying that the child had been “lost during the violent riots in Philadelphia, wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness. The only thing this Philadelphia Police Officer cared about in that moment was protecting this child. We are not your enemy. We are the Thin Blue Line. And WE ARE the only thing standing between Order and Anarchy.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer was able to get its hands on video shot by Aapril Rice that night and it showed, very definitively, that the only thing true in FOP’s social media post was that the block Ms. Young happened to turn down was “experiencing complete lawlessness.” However, the complete lawlessness was entirely the result of an abusive and out-of-control police force.

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Young was separated from her child for “hours” and taken into custody. She ended up at the hospital being treated for her bruised, bloody face, and was subsequently released with zero charges. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that a police officer and sergeant were fired, and 15 other officers still await disciplinary proceedings for their part in the terrorizing of a mother and her child.

Police Officer Darren Kardos, a seven-year veteran who worked in the 19th Police District, was fired for excessive use of force and physical abuse with a baton.

At a press conference announcing the settlement, Young said, “I will never forget what those officers did to us that night. I hope that the officers responsible will never have the chance to do something like this to another person ever again.” Young’s attorneys have called for Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to pursue criminal charges against all officers involved. Krasner has been pretty wishy washy about the whole thing, telling news outlets that “When you have a situation that is somewhat fluid on the street it is more difficult to reconstruct exactly what officer was where, when.”

Krasner was equally cagey when asked by The New York Times about the more than a dozen law enforcement officers that are suspected of participating in this videotaped crime. “It would be inappropriate under the law for us to comment on whether or not an investigation exists at this time. At a later time, we will have more to say.” The DA went on to point to “grainy cellphone footage” making it difficult to see details that would help a “criminal investigation.”

Young is also suing the Fraternal Order of Police. "The pain of seeing those images of my son in the arms of an officer and a horrible caption written to describe that picture may never heal,“ Young told reporters at the press conference on Tuesday. Philadelphia police say they have been unable to find out who took the photo of the apparent child abuse they were inflicting on Young’s child.