Back when I started teaching, back in the days when paranoia was limited, law suits against any slight committed by a school or a teacher were rare, when parents held their children more responsible for their actions and class effort than they do now, and before there was what should have remained a healthy precaution  about food brought from home, parents and grandparents, especially those who were immigrants, were thrilled to prepare their best dishes for school gatherings and classroom festivities.

But as time went on and school districts became wary of nuisance law suits, home cooked foods were no longer allowed as no one could vouch for the cleanliness of where the food was prepared or the hygiene habits of the preparer.

In many districts any celebratory food had to then come from the cafeteria, and where that was impractical, anything brought to school had to be store-bought and prepackaged.

In an ever widening circle of food fear, municipalities began to worry about such neighborhood staples as lemonade stands as the cleanliness of the preparation area, the hygiene of the preparer, the purity of the water, and the length of time the lemonade and lemons sat out in the scorching sun was an unknown that could cause potential illness.

Broadly looked at, these stands were in violation of health codes, and I know of instances where, in order to avoid law suits against the families of the little entrepreneurs and their parents who might then sue the city to recoup losses, sidewalk lemonade stands were closed down by the boards of health.

The caution may seem a little much, but it was understandable especially when you had no way of guaranteeing something hadn’t gotten into the lemonade either purposely poured or accidently falling in. Crazy people can do crazy things, and foolish people can do foolish things even if it is not malicious, but just a poorly though out joke.

But what happened in Washington DC this week was beyond ridiculous.

U.S. Park Police Officers detained the three teens on the National Mall for illegally selling cold bottled water to tourists on an extremely hot day. Two were 17 and the other 16, and they admitted they did not have a license or permit.

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There was no angry confrontation, so what was the safety issue?

Certainly officers can talk to people like this without handcuffing them.

They were eventually released to their parents and guardians with a verbal warning from Park Police regarding illegal vending. Their belongings were also returned to them.

Ascertaining the purity of the product was as easy as checking to see if the safety seals on the caps were broken, and although publicly selling consumables on the National Mall requires a permit which cannot be required for some, but not for all, this could have been explained to them in regular conversation without cuffs.

The three teenagers had taken it upon themselves to sell cold water on a hot day to tourists most likely seeing that as an honest way to make some money, and a pretty clever way to do it. They weren’t selling drugs, and they were displaying honest initiative.

The visual was a bad one.

To those who were nearby or who may have just purchased a bottle of water it was clear that the kids were innocent and the officers a little over the top in how they treated them, but from a distance three Black teens in handcuffs on the National Mall had a whole different look. They did not appear innocent, but rather, guilty of something calling for cuffs.

I will skip the all too obvious comparisons with how this might have been handled differently if a certain adjective did not come before the word “teens”.