The internet will always find you. Whether you’re a group of people getting their ass beat on a riverboat doc or a group of police falsely arresting a teenager taking out the trash, you can almost always count on there being video of the incident.
The viral video, which was originally posted on TikTok, is making the rounds all over social media. The four-minute long clip is captioned: “Kid taking out trash being harassed by police. Father defending his son. Wrong person.”
Although @careyann372 on TikTok said the teenager was taking out the trash, the video begins with the young Black teen in handcuffs.
Almost immediately, you can hear a man identifying himself as the father of the teenager trying to get his son out of the handcuffs and back inside their home.
One officer then puts the teenager in the back of a police car and another starts to have a conversation with the father. While everything he’s saying isn’t clear, he’s obviously frustrated.
He later says, “This is bullshit,” and explains that while he was washing the dishes he told his son to take the garbage out. The next you know, he’s being put in handcuffs. By his constant use of “bumbaclot,” it’s safe to assume he’s Jamaican.
When the officers eventually return the son to his father, he starts to go off on the officers involved.
In a statement from the Lansing Police Department, they addressed the viral video and the actions of the officers:
“On Thursday afternoon, our officers were investigating a string of Kia thefts, including a specific one reported on the 3600 block of W. Jolly Road with multiple suspects. A witness described a suspect as wearing neon shorts and a white shirt. A responding officer saw a subject matching this description and attempted to make contact but the subject fled and ran west in to the nearby apartment complex. A different officer was in the area and saw the young man pictured in the viral video wearing a very similar outfit and made contact with him. The initial officer was able to respond and clarify the young man in the video was not the suspect who fled earlier. Once this information was obtained, the young man was released and officers continued to search the area. We are including pictures of both individuals. We have blurred both photos to protect the identities of the subjects.
“Community relations is a top priority for us as a department, from top-down. Our hope is we can put this unfortunate case of “wrong place, wrong time” behind us and continue to represent the community that we serve."
If the description truly were that similar, I feel very sorry for the young man involved. Unlike some children, he will actually be traumatized because of this negative encounter with the police. Not only because he’s a kid, but he’s probably seen countless videos and images of Black teens around his age having an encounter with authorities that ends much worse than his did.