A video, posted on Twitter on July 25, shows St. Louis City Councilmember Timothy Jones harassing a Black teenager in a McDonald’s parking lot.
In the video, the councilman tells the 17-year-old that he’s going to call the police on him, claiming the teen dented his car. That’s when the teen starts recording the video. He asks Jones if he’s still planning to call the police, and Jones responds, “You’re fucking right I’m going to call the police, dude.”
In the recorded video, the teen proves that his car couldn’t have been responsible for the dent. When he opened his car door, it didn’t line up with the dent in question. The councilman, clearly wrong, never apologized in the video.
The teen’s sister shared the video on Twitter, where it garnered three million views and has been shared thousands of times.
“I taught my brother well,” she tweeted. “17 years old and respectfully made a fool out of this St. Louis Councilman who tried to harass him today.”
https://twitter.com/ImaniAhadi/status/1154502517549654026
Over the last two days, many Twitter users have shared their thoughts on the incident, with people praising the teen for keeping his cool and being respectful despite Jones’ behavior.
“Notice how the councilman keeps referring to your brother as ‘dude’ and your brother just keeps referring to him as ‘sir,'” one user pointed out. “He remained respectful the whole time and that little detail about the video spoke volumes to me about BOTH of them.”
Can we agree this was more about throwing his weight around and trying to scare a young black man into sucking up to him than about a dent at all? Even seems like he kind of knew the dent was probably already there, but his ego wouldn’t let him let it go smh
— Khaleesi ✨ (@TheDejaKing) July 26, 2019
Notice how the councilman keeps referring to your brother as “dude” and your brother just keeps referring to him as “sir.” He remained respectful the whole time and that little detail about the video spoke volumes to me about BOTH of them.
— des (@Tiana_Cubana) July 26, 2019
This is when they hope you overreact but instead you make a fool out of them https://t.co/9VP3EwJLqu
— KB (@therealKCrump) July 25, 2019
In addition to the video, the teen’s sister also posted a newspaper article from 2014 on Twitter. The article describes how the police arrested Jones for trying to pay an undercover police officer for sex.
Jones is a current member of the Florissant City Council in St. Louis, Missouri.
The Daily Dot has reached out to both the teen and Jones’ office.
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H/T Daily Mail