All five claimed he had used excessive force or made racially biased stops. All five had been investigated and dismissed by the department. The pattern was undeniable and it had been sitting in his personnel file the entire time. The media picked up on it immediately. Headlines started appearing.
Officer with history of racial bias tasers, 12-year-old on his own porch. Child arrested for picking up package. Mother is state attorney. Body cam footage shows cop laughing at Black child's explanation. Rebecca held a press conference 2 days after the incident.
She stood at a podium with Elijah beside her and she spoke with the calm, measured precision of someone who had spent years in courtrooms but was now speaking as a mother who had watched her son be assaulted. "My son was tasered on his own front porch for the crime of being Black. He showed officer Preston his package. He told officer Preston he lived there. A neighbor confirmed it.
None of it mattered. Officer Preston had already decided my son was a criminal and no amount of evidence was going to change his mind." She paused and when she spoke again, her voice carried a weight that made every reporter in the room go silent. "This is not an isolated incident. This is a pattern.
Officer Preston has five complaints on his record. Five times Black and Latino residents told the department that he was targeting them. Five times the department dismissed those complaints. And now, because no one held him accountable, my 12-year-old son has taser burns on his chest and bruises on his wrists from being handcuffed on his own front porch." Rebecca looked directly into the cameras.
"I am the state attorney for this county. I have prosecuted cases involving police misconduct before, but I have recused myself from this case because I am not just a prosecutor right now. I am a mother, and I will not stop until Officer Mark Preston is held accountable for what he did to my son." She stepped back from the podium and the room erupted with questions, but Rebecca didn't answer them. She took Elijah's hand and walked out, leaving the press conference with one final statement that would be replayed on every news station for the next week.
"A badge is not permission to ignore the truth, and my son deserves justice." By the end of that day, the Charlotte Police Department had placed Officer Mark Preston on administrative leave. By the end of the week, criminal charges were being filed, and by the end of the month, Marcus Reed had filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking $1.4 million in damages. Officer Mark Preston's career was over. His reputation was destroyed, and his name would be permanently attached to one of the most widely condemned examples of police violence against a child ever caught on camera.