A viral video showing a 12-year-old boy being arrested for recklessly riding a bike has stirred outrage and raised questions about why police felt they needed to go so far as to charge the boy.

A roughly one-minute clip posted to TikTok shows a police officer in Charlotte, North Carolina, explaining to a bystander the reason for the boy’s detainment.

“[If] they recklessly drive into traffic, hitting cars, we try to stop them,” the officer is heard saying. “Obviously, they take off, so we have to seize the bike…doesn’t matter if they’re a kid, it’s still illegal, right?”

The video shows the handcuffed child sitting in the back of a police cruiser. At one point, he recites a telephone number and tells the bystanders to call his mother.

One bystander is heard challenging the boy’s detainm

See Full Page