WATCH: D.C. Police Humiliate a Black Teen During a Search, But Was it Necessary?
Police officers don’t always resort to violence — sometimes they just settle for embarrassment on people they are searching or detaining.
Just look at this video of officers from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in Washington, D.C. searching a Black teenager in public by crouching down behind him and pointing a flashlight up his rear end while his pants are down in front of hundreds of people.
This is racist & humiliating. Police pull down his pants past his ass to stick a flashlight down there. Only one arrested among 1000 is a young Black kid. Looked 15. Not a protester. His father came. He was in tears from his experience. No crime. Just trauma. More details coming. pic.twitter.com/DEKIRsbgza
— #StopCopCity (@ChuckModi1) April 28, 2024
According to the Atlanta Black Star, officers stopped the teenager for attempting to ride his bike through a protest that was taking place outside the hotel where the White House Correspondents Dinner was taking place over the weekend.
“Officers stopped a juvenile male for attempting to ride a bike through a demonstration. The juvenile did not obey lawful commands given by officers on scene. A stop was conducted, and he was sent on his way,” a spokesperson for the MPD stated.
Protesters were voicing their frustration with President Joe Biden’s response to the ongoing violent conflict between Israel and Palestine.
In another social media post, Chuck Modiano, the journalist who took the original video, was seen asking a bystander who spoke to police officers why they were searching the teenager so invasively.
“I was asking 1 of the police officers… why are you arresting a kid who just wanted to bike thru this lane? He said: ‘You don’t know if this kid was on his way to kill somebody. UDK if he had a bomb or knife or planning to rob someone”
Witness on convo of kid’s arrest. WTF? pic.twitter.com/SolQrVtwqm— #StopCopCity (@ChuckModi1) April 28, 2024
When asked what an officer told her, the bystander said, “I was talking to him [the police officer] about the young boy who was riding his bike through and he said he wasn’t going to turn around so they tackled him to the ground…It was at least three or four adults.”
“Why are you arresting a kid that just wanted to pass by through this lane that he probably bikes through every day? He said, ‘You don’t know if this kid was on his way to kill somebody. You don’t if he had a bomb or knife or planning to rob someone.’”
The bystander noted that the police officer she spoke to was also Black.
She also said that the officer told her, “’There is a reason why a lot of these kids these days are committing so much crime it’s because they don’t have fathers,” though the teenager’s father came to the scene to pick his son up after he was searched.
