NOT a news stor
By Petula Dvorak Columnist June 26 at 1:35 PM
Their original plan was to work at Six Flags.
The girls they’d meet. The fun they’d have. Free admission to the amusement park on days off. Perfect, right?
“It was the total package,” said Nolan White, 17.
Except Nolan and his friends didn’t get the jobs. Too much competition.
“So they tried something else,” said Raymond Bell, who understood the spirit of the boys’ plan and has his own plans for them. But we’ll get to that later.
See, the teens decided to make lemonade out of lemons and become entrepreneurs by selling cold, bottled water to hot tourists on a parched Mall.
“We bought the water, like 15 cases. And a cooler and two totes,” Nolan said, outlining his business plan. “We charged a dollar a bottle.” The plan gave them a significant profit margin.
Makes sense. Some of the water fountains on the Mall don’t work, vendors aren’t everywhere, and the District topped out at 95 degrees last week.
Heck, even the U.S. Park Police in the District encouraged folks to hit the water bottles with a retweet of something their New York outpost sent out: “HYDRATE, while working/exercising outdoors during hot weather. Drink water before you feel thirsty.”
So selling water during last week’s heat wave is the kind of get-up-and-go that most of America would cheer.
But instead, the D.C. Water Boys became a national story. And another clear example of the way the world continues to see them. And fear them.
[Park Police criticized for detaining water-selling youths]
Selling Water While Black was enough to get the teens — one 16 and two 17 — handcuffed and humiliated by Park Police working an undercover sting targeting illegal vendors.
Nolan and his buddies were dumping the melting ice out of their bins, about to head home, when they were surrounded by three undercover officers who pulled out their badges and cuffed the boys before questioning or conversation even began, Nolan said.
There they were, hands behind their backs, one splayed on a sidewalk, as tourists walked by and gawked.
“It was embarrassing. All these people watching us, thinking we’re just criminals,” Nolan told me. He had never been in handcuffs before. He said they hurt.
But he kept remembering what his mom told him — the mantra of every black child’s mother. “She told me to stay calm, do whatever the officer said, cooperate,” Nolan said.
It’s what black kids are used to.
“My kids sell water and everyone smiles at them,” tweeted Tim Krepp, a D.C. author and tour guide who happened upon the scene Thursday and took the photos that went viral. “These kids do it and get arrested. It IS racist.”
Why handcuffs? It was just water.
“They broke the law!” Twitter howled.
Nope. The haters and I both know this isn’t the way police would treat white kids who set up a lemonade stand without understanding the rules.
“I really didn’t know you had to have any kind of permit for it,” Nolan said. “I just thought it was something you could do.”
Here’s where we get back to the race part.
The kids were handcuffed for the “safety of the officers and of the individuals,” Park Police spokeswoman Sgt. Anna Rose said in a statement.
There you have it. Fear is what it comes down to.
Fear of Trayvon Martin’s Skittles.
Fear of Tamir Rice’s toy gun.
Fear of Michael Brown’s size.
Fear of water bottles?
Over and over again, we see non-black folks acting out of fear when they interact with black Americans.
The fear factor was firmly established last week when a Minnesota jury decided that being afraid of a black man was reason enough for a police officer to kill him.
Officer Jeronimo Yanez testified that he feared for his life when he killed Philando Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria worker who was calm and cooperative in one of the clearest videotaped police shootings America has seen. Castile’s girlfriend live-streamed his death from their car on Facebook when it happened last July, and dashboard-camera video shown at Yanez’s trial this month shows an equally devastating angle of the killing.
[Officer acquitted in Philando Castile shooting]
That officer didn’t see a beloved cafeteria worker who knew every kid’s name. He didn’t see the gun owner licensed to carry a concealed weapon. Nope. He saw danger. His fear was his license to kill.
What happened to the D.C. Water Boys obviously is different. No one was shot or killed.
I asked Nolan if his mom was mad at him — when she finally picked him up, after about an hour and a half in handcuffs in 90-degree heat. His answer was heartbreaking.
“She was happy that I was alive,” he said.
The youths were eventually uncuffed and released. But the judgment that society placed on them that day — handcuffs and public humiliation, rather than a stern warning and a reading of the rules that would be more appropriate for kids — will stay with them for a lifetime.
When all they wanted was a summer job.
Here’s where we get back to Raymond Bell.
The mother of one of the Water Boys (who also is a godmother to another) called Bell last year to ask about his job training program, the HOPE (Helping Other People Excel) Project.
Bell trains people for jobs in information technology — screen replacement techs, tech support and so forth. He has a summer program for high school students and a year-round program for adults, graduating about 150 people and placing them in jobs every year.
“I know it’s not the sexiest thing,” Bell explains. “But we need more positive images out there that are not just about rapping, singing and playing ball. It bothers me that so many kids see that as the only path to success.”
Only, the boys had the Six Flags plan. An understandable miscalculation for a teen.
“But that didn’t pan out,” Bell said.
So after someone in his social circle identified the kids from Krepp’s photo, Bell went into his files to find their information and called the mom .
Nolan walked into the HOPE offices Monday.
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Bell immediately gave him a black, gold and blue HOPE Project shirt to put over his white tank top. Bell showed him a binder full of job offers for past graduates. Nolan told him about his dream of training as an electrician and carpenter and renovating and flipping old homes.
“But this,” he said, looking at the job offers to work in IT, “this would be an upgrade on my dream.”
So Bell laid out the rules and told him about all the work and training he’d be doing this summer.
“I’m ready to take on that responsibility, sir,” Nolan told him.
And then he called his friends to tell them about the job. The total package.
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Petula is a columnist for The Washington Post's local team who writes about homeless shelters, gun control, high heels, high school choirs, the politics of parenting, jails, abortion clinics, mayors, modern families, strip clubs and gas prices, among other things.
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The Golden Country
3:38 AM EST
You f*ing morons. This is a success story, told through the tragic lens of the racial injustice in this country which will never change. Raymond Bell is the real story and the hero here- the one who recognizes this fact (ubiquity of institutional racism), yet selflessly dedicates himself to providing invaluable tools to these youth with little opportunity to tread a path to a more hopeful and stable future.
Regardless of your political affiliation, love or hatred for the Washington Post, or any other end you may find yourself on of a given polarized topic, please just acknowledge the goodness of this person. This article sheds a rare positive light on the effectiveness and goodness of humanity. The typical hateful banter of these comment sections is moot on this one,,,
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nycjsw1
3:28 AM EST
Conservative here - My view is that a written warning along with documenting their names was enough and handcuffs weren't needed. That's with not knowing how things are usually done in that area - perhaps teenagers often run when confronted by LE? I'm not sure why the author felt the need to bring in all the examples that clearly don't apply - it would be equally as bad as someone bringing up tons of examples of black teens committing violent acts = stick to the facts that apply.
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jparsons.net
3:26 AM EST
This is yet another example of busybody government employees interfering with the free market. Get government out of the way.
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David O Athens GA
2:51 AM EST
So many trolls.
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Jake Holman
2:41 AM EST
Nothing brings out the angry, fearful hysteria of right-wingers like a story on black or brown folks. I wonder how many of them actually have any contact with people of color in their daily lives. I do, every day (living in California, a--HORROR!!!--white minority state). In my 58 years in California, I have never been mugged, harassed, knocked out, threatened, or even disrespected by any POC. But I have seen a number of instances of my fellow whites going off on POC. "You only got that job because of affirmative action!", "Go back where you came from!", "You're not a real American!", "Speak English!" (to a restaurant employee simply taking the order of another customer). It never ends.
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Emm ily
2:00 AM EST [Edited]
THEY WERE DUMPING THEIR WASTE ON THE GROUND IN THE NATIONAL MALL. I guess the kids do that in their own neighborhoods and nobody cares, but polite people don't do that. If they did that in my neighborhood then the handcuffs would be the least of their worries.
Why do liberals insist that blacks are too stupid to follow the laws that everyone else follows?
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2
JackSweeney
2:08 AM EST
What kind of moron equates I've and water with "waste"? Oh right, one like you.
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6
1ijack
2:13 AM EST
Why did you change water to waste? Because you were distorting the facts so that you could call people names. Didn't your mama teach you that alternative facts are lies? No? Is that because you are a .... whatever it is you are.
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6
Pol Pot
1:57 AM EST
Dvorak's Leftist indoctrination and brainwashing runs deep, nothing to see here move along.
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2
Wendy Sager
1:53 AM EST
Hey Conservatives - don't you support deregulation? The entrepreneurial spirit?
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6
Emm ily
1:51 AM EST
The cops made sure they didn't need to pull their weapons -- and of course the WaRag complains about that, hoping that some black kid will get shot and drive up their clicks. It is so sick and obvious what the WaRag's motivation is.
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Sigmund Frog
1:44 AM EST [Edited]
Laws. Who need them when they are inconvenient to certain minorities. Just look the other way and before you know it they are robbing and killing on the subway. Or becoming a Michael Brown type thug. Hey, they dindonuffin.
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4
bzoinks
12:47 AM EST
This is no story here; just garbage blather from a mindless self-loathing white idiot who's trying to stir up racial animosity.
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3
Sigmund Frog
12:28 AM EST
The article is typical Washingtin Post liberal ignorance. They were selling products illegally and were treated accordingly.
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5
CrashCart
12:37 AM EST
So, should we also handcuff girls selling lemonade in Fairfax? How about kids operating a car wash? Life is not all about law and order? Whatever happened to freedom?
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5
wrybread
12:40 AM EST
When little white girls selling lemonade on the corner of their suburban street are put into handcuffs, you'll have a point.
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10
1968-1968
3:10 AM EST
On their own property is different from in a public space.
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1
ScienceTim
12:46 AM EST
Since the article addresses exactly this point, I take it that either you didn't read the article, or you agree with the cops that black kids should be treated more severely because of their race.
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CADCAM
12:06 AM EST
Perhaps, the vendors that have the trucks around, that pay permitting fees and taxes, didn't care for these youths illegally cutting into their business. Not unreasonable.
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2
Shathavuni
12:17 AM EST
Your point is valid, but yhe liberals will ask, was it necessary to hand cuff these youngsters? The answer is Yes! Look at it from a white police officers point of view. There were lots of people around, so they couldn't shoot them in the back. They had to settle for hand cuffs and public humiliation.
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6
Shathavuni
12:04 AM EST
This is the season when Ralph and Edna of Peoria and their insufferable brats descend on DC. You know, the ones who clog the Metro car doors and escalators so no one can pass. This will be a useful lesson for Suzie and Mickey. The American way to deal with dangerous black thugs. Too bad the the little criminals weren't a little older with their backs turned. Then they could have been legally shot.
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2
S Malinche
6/26/2017 11:55 PM EST
Such a non-story looking for a racial angle. Selling on the mall is prohibited. But the police do not need to use handcuffs on anyone in a situation like this. Just saying "go" should work.
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1
drgulla
12:41 AM EST
"looking for" a racial angle? I don't think anyone had to look for it. Just call us the next time you see a bunch of white kids getting handcuffed for setting up a lemonade stand.
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4
wrybread
12:41 AM EST
"the police do not need to use handcuffs on anyone in a situation like this" - yes, that IS the "racial angle".
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