Black Teens Handcuffed for Selling Water

On Thursday, four young black men were detained and handcuffed by undercover police for selling water at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

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On Friday, U.S. Park Police Sergeant Anna Rose said, in a statement, that “officers placed them (two 17-year-olds, a 16-year-old and an adult) in handcuffs for the safety of the officers and of the individuals.

“Vending on the National Mall is illegal without a permit,” Rose added, stating that the teens were released without charges after their parents arrived at the park’s police station and that the incident was “blown out of proportion.”

A Mall worker, Tim Krepp, posted images of the young men in cuffs on his Twitter page. Krepp, who spoke to HuffPost, said his shift had just ended when he saw the young men in the custody of plainclothes park policemen.

Krepp, a tour guide for almost 11 years, said that young boys and girls sell water at the Mall “all the time,” but he has never witnessed anyone being handcuffed as a result.

“My kids sell water and everyone smiles at them. These kids do it and get arrested. It is racist,” Krepp wrote on his Twitter. 

He said seeing the young men handcuffed, sitting on the ground and being searched struck him.

Krepp’s tweet, which has since been shared more than 15,000 times, has sparked wide-scale outrage from the public as well as political representatives.

“There’s no way you can avoid the obvious imagery of young black men being handcuffed and clearly being treated as a threat with white cops around,” Krepp told HuffPost. Krepp added that this incident speaks to a broader more significant issue involving the policing of people of color.

“Images matter and symbols matter, especially at the National Mall when you’re here to see symbols and images to learn,” he added. “That’s why it’s here, this is a sacred space to talk about our national history and the cops should be aware of that.”

Washington D.C. Councilman Charles Allen chimed in on the incident, posting a letter he addressed to the U.S. Park Police chief.

In the letter, Allen pointed out the racial double standard regarding the manner in which the incident was handled.

“While I understand the need to maintain consistency in permitted actions, I do not understand why the enforcement cannot take place with uniformed personnel and actions less severe than handcuffing individuals suspected of the sales. I can’t help but think how the reaction by these same officers might have varied if different children had set up a quaint hand-painted lemonade stand on the same spot,” Allen's letter detailed.

“While still the same violation of selling a beverage without proper permits and licenses, I doubt we would have seen little girls in pigtails handcuffed on the ground.”