Video shows supposed Klan member spraying Black teen with a hose

Aug 20, 2019

An upstate New York mother wants justice for racial harassment heaved at her teenaged son by a man who claims to be linked to the Ku Klux Klan.

According to Rochester, N.Y., station WROC-TV, Christina Poles, the mother of the young man, is reaching out through social media in efforts to make the public aware of what happened to her 14-year-old son.

Video surfaced this week of the unidentified East Rochester man spraying a Black teenager with a hose during a heated confrontation. The clip shows the run in between them outside of the man’s home.

“You shouldn’t be f*cking with the Klan,” the man can be heard yelling. He then walks toward his yard and grabs a hose as he hurls a racial slur at the boy.

Poles said her son got into a verbal argument with the man at a nearby park while hanging out with a group of friends. The altercation then re-ignited as they were walking past his house, at which time the police were called in to intervene.

“He was outside doing it again, flipping them off,” the distraught mother explains. “My son said something along the lines of ‘why do you keep flipping us off,’ said some other profanities I wish he hadn’t.”

The day of the incident, responding officers initially spoke to the man, the teen and his mother. But once Poles was made aware of the video and heard the racially charged language used against her child, she contacted authorities to look further into his threats and claims of being a member of the KKK.

READ MORE: Black home buyer who found KKK memorabilia in cop’s home receives death threats

“It was like a scene out of the 60s,” she said. “You don’t see stuff like that in 2019.”

“It never affected me and now I see this video and it’s my son that this is happening to, so it puts things in perspective a little bit,” she concluded, noting that she was assured that an arrest would be made.

But while he local police chief has told the news channel that they are looking into the footage and plan to hold the man accountable, he has yet to be charged.