The officer watched the phone screen for several seconds before saying a word. My niece’s mother stood beside him, her arms folded tightly across her chest, while I stayed on the grass beside my daughter. The ambulance lights kept washing over the front of the house in red and blue pulses.
Then the officer looked up.
“Who recorded this?”
My niece’s mother answered quietly. “My daughter did.”
I looked toward the doorway. My niece was still there, small in her birthday clothes, one hand pressed over her mouth. She looked terrified.
The officer turned the phone slightly toward his partner.
“How long is the video?”
“Seven minutes,” my niece’s mother said.
My father immediately stepped forward.
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
The officer didn’t look at him.
My mother did.
“You need to understand what was happening before that recording started,” she said. “She was misbehaving. We were trying to teach her a lesson.”
My daughter was six years old
