Police stop armed patrol in Fort Worth neighborhood where mother and daughters were arrested

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Armed men and a separate group of young boys took it up on themselves to patrol the neighborhood where a Fort Worth Woman and her two daughters were arrested last month.

Video, posted to Facebook, shows the men walking down the sidewalk with rifles. It is the same area where Officer William Martin arrested Jacqueline Craig and her two daughters, one month ago, after she called police  claiming a neighbor had choked her 7-year-old son.

Officer Martin was suspended without pay for 2 weeks and is preparing to return to his patrol in that same neighborhood.

Behind the armed men was another group. About 20 young people, children and teens, say they were also there to defend Jacqueline Craig.

 

The show of support Saturday was not planned, and only lasted about 20 minutes before neighbors called police, and the patrolmen left. Neighbors, near Trail Lake Drive and Altamesa Boulevard, asked to remain anonymous. They say their weekend was disrupted, and that one of the men was yelling through a loud speaker, and others were yelling profanities. Neighbors also say they were worried the patrol could be come violent. A Craig family spokesman disagreed.

"I didn't find anything alarming myself. I didn't find anything out of the norm. Police officers have guns, but they don't protect," said Roderick Smith, "She said it meant a lot to have complete strangers come and try to protect her, when the individuals that she pays, which is the Fort Worth Police Department, failed to do so."

Smith believes this patrol would never have happened if Officer Martin were not being reassigned to the same part of the community.

"If a predator knows where you stay, you're still at risk, right? The predator, the officer, knows where she stays, so they want to make sure she's protected," said Smith.

Fort Worth Police are not commenting on the incident, but say several neighbors called police. Police asked the men with the guns to put their weapons down, then leave. No one was arrested.