For those who think policing only impacts adults, I want to say a word about Jacob Blake's children and all kids.

They are watching.

Police surveillance, brutality, and violence is harmful to kids - as direct victims and as witnesses. My latest:
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/jacob-blake-s-police-shooting-highlights-hidden-victims-police-violence-ncna1238574
Thread

It is hard to forget the 4 year old girl who sat in the back seat, while Philando Castille was gunned down by police in the front seat of his car for a traffic stop.

But yet we often treat policing as a harm that only touches adult lives.

It is impossible to look away from Korryn Gaines' 5 year old son who was sitting so close to her, when she was shot and killed in a police stand off, he was wounded in the police gun fire.

Yet we don't talk about children as victims or as witnesses to the harms of policing.

Atatiana Jefferson was playing with her 8 year old nephew before police shot and killed her during a welfare check.

And Jacob Blake's children aged 3, 5, and 8 sat just feet away while their father was severely injured by police firing into his back.

Kids have been watching.

The science tells us that when children witness physical violence, in person and virtually, it results in poor self-reported physical health, mental health conditions like depression and PTSD, and impaired school performance which threatens their educational attainment.

When police violence, in particular, is directed at members of a child's immediate family, acute effects include the separation of children from their caregivers. This is a harmful form of stress and trauma that can also impair children's adult health.

Despite their age and developmental vulnerability, Black, Latinx and Indigenous children are also sometimes directly targeted, stopped, frisked, questioned, and harmed by police. Children with special needs also have higher rates of police stops.

These stops are not benign.

The bottom line is, in the words of @LeahRigueur "Black people lack sanctuary" from the harms of state violence in the US, and so do our children and kids of color.

They lack sanctuary at home - Aiyana Jones aged 7 was shot in a police raid in Detroit while sleeping on her sofa.