- Police in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, stopped a group of teens riding their bikes, video shows.
- One of the teens was seen in the video being handcuffed as cops seized his bike.
- Police said the teens needed licenses to ride their bikes in the streets.
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New Jersey police handcuffed a Black teen and seized his bicycle after officers said he and a group of friends were riding without proper licenses, a video taken by one of the boys shows.
A 17-minute-long video posted to YouTube shows the group riding through the streets of Perth Amboy, a suburb just west of Staten Island. The group pops wheelies and rides against traffic during the video.
As the group splits up, one of the teens is stopped by a police officer, who warns the group they were interfering with traffic and asked the teens not to ride without a license. The officer is heard on video saying their bikes wouldn't be confiscated.
But after a cut in the video, footage shows the situation between police officers and the teens escalated, and one officer can be seen ordering other cops to confiscate the bikes.
One of the teens refused to give officers his bike and was put in handcuffs, the video shows. He was taken into custody, but he was later released. It is unclear if any charges were filed.
The Perth Amboy Police Department did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Perth Amboy requires license tags for all cyclists riding in streets or on highways, according to a city ordinance, and riding bikes on certain sidewalks is not allowed, NJ.com reported.
All four bikes were eventually returned to the teens, according to NJ.com, though it's unclear if any of the teens were fined.
Perth Amboy Council President William A. Petrick said in a statement to NJ.com that the officer who ordered others to confiscate the bikes "did the right thing."
"What happens is they do create a dangerous situation that could end up with one of them getting injured or killed, and then it's not their fault, it's the operator of a motor vehicle's fault," he said.
He added that the optics of putting a Black teen in handcuffs are "very bad."
"But he was not being very cooperative with the police, and why they decided to take him into protective custody, it may have been the stance he was taking with them," he told NJ.com.
Amol Sinha, the executive director of the ACLU New Jersey, meanwhile, voiced outrage over the video.
"Are the police really arresting kids over bike registrations? Does it really require this many officers to address whatever situation this is? Police CANNOT continue to be our response to EVERYTHING," Sinha said on Twitter.