From Snopes This story was a fake. How dumb............ Claim: A NYPD police officer killed a baby following a breastfeeding dispute with the childs mother. FALSE Example: [Collected via e-mail, August 2014] Did an NYPD officer kill a baby after a breast feeding incident? There is an article claiming that it happened, that was posted on Facebook. Origins: On 7 August 2014, the National Report published an article positing that a NYPD police officer had killed a baby following a breastfeeding dispute with the childs mother: In a continuation of the ongoing police scandals rocking the New York City Police Department, three-month old infant Layla Smith has been pronounced dead following an August sixth incident. This closely follows the July seventeenth death of NYC resident Eric Garner after the use of a prohibited choke hold by officers against him. Garners death was ruled a homicide by the NYC medical examiners office. Suzanne Smith, Layla’s mother, had been sitting on a bench in Queens waiting for the bus when Layla began to insistently cry. Knowing that her baby was hungry Ms. Smith began to breastfeed her daughter. Witnesses at the scene report that she was then approached by a NYPD Officer, later identified as Michael Fitzsimmons, who requested that she stop feeding the baby in public as it was “indecent”. Ms. Smith refused to comply with the directive and told Officer Fitzsimmons that she wasn’t doing anything illegal. Officer Fitzsimmons again insisted that she stop and threatened to arrest her for indecent exposure. Ms. Smith calmly responded to the Officer that he could not arrest her because breastfeeding in public wasn’t against the law. “He got so mad at her”, said Tyrone Webb, who witnessed the unfortunate altercation. “He started yelling at her, saying that he was the police, and that she didn’t know s**t about what was against the law. He got all red in the face, pointing his finger right at her nose. She just sat there and kept feeding the baby calm as could be, being real polite and reasonable. Someone else tried to chime in and tell him he was wrong and he told the lady to shut up and mind her business.” By the following day links and excerpts referencing this article were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered the item mistaking it for a genuine news article. However, the article was just another bit of fake news from the National Report, a web site that publishes outrageous fictional stories such as IRS Plans to Target Leprechauns Next, Boy Scouts Announce Boobs Merit Badge, and New CDC Study Indicates Pets of Gay Couples Worse at Sports, Better at Fashion Than Pets of Straight Couples. The National Reports (since removed) disclaimer page noted that all of the sites articles are fiction: National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental. Read more at snopes/media/notnews/babydead.asp#LT8uBE1IPebqORiW.99
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 04:14:13 +0000
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