Charles Allen to Park Police: Handcuffing black teens for selling water is ridiculous

Public SpacesBy Jonathan Neeley (Former Staff Editor) June 26, 2017

Image by Tim Krepp used with permission.

On Thursday, undercover US Park Police handcuffed four black teenagers for selling bottled water without a permit on the National Mall. The next day, Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen basically asked the police chief if, in the name of enforcing park rules, his officers would do the same if they caught little girls selling lemonade.

Tim Krepp, a DC tour guide who has written for GGWash in the past, witnessed the incident and tweeted photos on Thursday afternoon:

It's true that you need a permit to sell water on the Mall. But it's also true that people sell refreshments, t-shirts, and souvenirs as part of an informal economy all the time, and there's enough gray area here to say that this wasn't the only way to enforce the rules.

“The District hosts National Park Service sites throughout the city,” read Allen's letter. “Large parks link Lincoln and Stanton Park, as well as small parks such as the myriad of pocket parks in residential neighborhoods. I observe any number of lemonade stands in these areas by neighborhood children. Should I warn their parents that the children are likely to be handcuffed and searched without the proper permits in hand?”

Here's the full letter that Allen sent Park Police Chief Robery Maclean:

Both DCist and the Washington Post ran articles on the matter Friday, and as of Monday morning, nearly 16,000 people had retweeted Krepp's photos. DC Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton weighed in to say she wanted Park Police to come to her office and explain what had happened.

Obviously, this story struck a chord with a lot of people. Relative to what we write about here on GGWash, it has me thinking about what our public spaces are for and who feels welcome in them.

Just in the last few months, we've had articles about a new park and playground at the Eastern Market Metro, tweaks to trails that make them safer, and the best running trails in the District. And while I think we'd all like to assume these places are for everyone, incidents like this one— on the National Mall, of all places— send a different message. They're a reminder that whether or not a place is safe depends entirely on context, and that not everyone feels welcome in our communities even if we say they are.

In this morning's Post Express, there's a little blurb about this water ordeal on the Mall. The next page is taken up almost entirely by a story about why it's so hard to prosecute police officers who shoot unarmed black men, and as I was reading I had to pause on this line: “Studies have shown that conscious and unconscious fear of African-American men plays out in numerous ways, including in exchanges between police and blacks.”

What does that fear look like in a national park? The photos from Thursday paint a pretty clear picture.