Last night, I retweeted an image that rubbed me the wrong way.
It showed three kids who were handcuffed by undercover cops for criminal activity.
And what was their crime? Were they picking pockets? Beating up tourists? Slashing tires?
Nope, none of those things. Instead, they were (gasp!!) selling water to thirsty people. And they didn’t have a piece of paper from the government giving them permission to participate in voluntary exchange. Oh, the horror.
And everyone knows that selling water without a license is a gateway drug to the ultimate underage crime of operating an unlicensed lemonade stand. Or maybe even shoveling snow, cutting grass, or selling worms without government approval!
Here’s the original tweet.
Undercover @usparkpolicepio handcuffing kids on @NationalMallNPS for selling water. pic.twitter.com/7iSqP4UYMq
— Tim Krepp (@timkrepp) June 22, 2017
This really sums up why libertarians don’t like government. All too often, it’s the unfair application of force against innocent behavior.
This episode of government thuggery has received a surprising amount of coverage. Here are some excerpts from a story by U.S. News & World Report.
Police handcuffed three teenagers Thursday evening for attempting to selling water without a permit on the National Mall.Photos tweeted by passerby Tim Krepp, a tour guide and writer, show three plainclothes U.S. Park Police officers detaining the three African-American teens near the Mall’s Smithsonian Castle, located between the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol.
The good news is that the kids weren’t actually arrested.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Park Police, Sgt. Anna Rose, confirms three teenagers were detained for vending without a license, but says she feels “this has gotten blown out of proportion.” The three teens, ages 16 and 17, were detained for “illegally selling water” but were not charged, Rose says. They were held until their parents arrived. A fourth individual was immediately released after officers determined he was uninvolved, she says.
If you click on Mr. Krepp’s tweet and read the comments, you’ll notice some discussion of whether white kids would have been treated the same way.
I don’t like to assume racism without real evidence, so my default assumption is that the cops were primarily motivated by a desire to fill their quota and have some proof that they weren’t goofing off.
But it’s also worth noting that the over-criminalization of society creates opportunities for bad people in government to target minorities (or other groups that fall into disfavor). And if it’s dangerous to ride a train while black, then it’s also possible that it’s risky to sell water while black.
The broader lesson is that it’s a good idea to have fewer laws. And the laws that do exist should be designed to protect people from external aggression. Especially given the horror stories that are produced by the alternative approach.
