Police forcibly restrain 9-year-old at school in Belgium

BRUSSELS

A nine-year-old boy was forcibly restrained by a police officer at a special education primary school in southern Belgium, local media reported Thursday.

The incident took place Tuesday in the city of Nalinnes when police were called to the school to "calm down a 9-year-old child who was being difficult," The Brussels Times reported.

Video footage filmed by the boy’s mother shows a police officer restraining him on the ground, said the report.

"The management restrained him initially before calling in our services. We don't just walk into schools. The child was difficult and the mother was not responding to calls from the school," said Commanding Officer of the Germinalt police zone Alain Bal.

The mother said she received an urgent call to pick up her son from school and when she arrived, she found the police intervening, saying “I had the image of George Floyd in my mind.”

Floyd, a Black man, was killed on May 25, 2020 by Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on his neck for nearly 10 minutes until he died.

The mother added that her son had suffered a nervous breakdown because he was exposed to racist insults from a student who called him "a dirty Black."

She said this happened for the second time in a week.

An investigation has been launched into the incident following the mother's complaint.