Stephen Janis, The Examiner
2008-03-17 08:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

The child became an unwitting celebrity. Cops slapped handcuffs on him and snapped his mug shot. Newspapers worldwide picked up the story of his arrest. In a scathing editorial, The New York Times cited the arrest as an example of overly aggressive police tactics involving African-American children.

Mayor Sheila Dixon apologized on behalf of the city’s police department.

Gerard Mungo Jr.’s offense: sitting on a dirt bike in East Baltimore.

Over the weekend, a year after his arrest, the feisty 8-year-old shoots hoops at Lake Clifton High School gym. The tears have gone. But the pain and the fear of police remain, as does his parents’ outrage.

“He still has problems because of it,” said Gerard’s mother, Likisa Dinkins, standing in the family’s Northeast Baltimore home.

Classmates laugh at Gerard because he sees a counselor at school.

“They call him ‘jailbird,’ ” says his mother.

Mungo still harbors a deep-seated fear of police, said his father, Gerard Mungo Sr.: “We were driving the other day. We saw a police car, and he slouched down in the back and hid.

“When they come around the block, he runs inside. He’s still afraid.”

Gerard’s family has moved from East Baltimore in hopes of starting over.

“We just got tired of being harassed,” Dinkins says. “Police were always sitting at the stop light in front of our house, pointing and laughing at us.”

At their new home, his father stands on the street tossing a football to Gerard while Dinkins supervises his older brother in the kitchen as he washes the dishes.

“Everywhere we go, people recognize us,” Dinkins says. “We were in Georgetown the other day, and people said, ‘I saw you on TV.’ It happens all the time.”

The oddest moment, Dinkins said, was when a woman accosted her in a checkout line at a Target.

“That’s you in the magazine,” Dinkins recalled the woman exclaiming. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw it,” Dinkins said of an Essence article featuring a photo of her with her arm on Gerard’s shoulder the day after his arrest. The article recounted the arrests of young African-American children throughout the country.

And while things have changed for the Mungo family, the city Police Department has changed too since the boy’s arrest.

Former Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm, who said publicly Gerard’s arrest was not “consistent” with his policy, was fired by Dixon in July 2007. Frederick Bealefeld took Hamm’s place.

The department has scaled back its zero-tolerance policy that led to ten of thousands of arrests ending without charges, and instead focuses more on career criminals. At Dixon’s behest, police have tried to improve relations with the communities they patrol.

Gerard’s family filed a lawsuit in November against the city, seeking millions of dollars in damages for pain and suffering resulting from the arrest of Gerard and, two weeks later, his mother. She says she got arrested because she stood up to police, not for interfering when they broke down the door of her sister’s row house in pursuit of her nephew, whom police said they suspected of having drugs.

“Once they knew who I was, they threw, pushed me down onto the chair and said, ‘You’re under arrest,’ ” Dinkins says.

Gerard, however, appears to take it all in stride. He says he has high hopes for his future as he stands on the stoop of his new home, holding up two basketball trophies earned for his play in the city’s recreation league.

“I’m good,” he says with a smile. “I score five or six points a game.”

sjanis@baltimoreexaminer.com