A watermelon was left on the desk of a Black deputy assistant director at the U.S. Marshals Service, and the man who ran his division is now on administrative leave. Peter Marketos, assistant director of the Investigative Operations Division, was removed from his duties before Monday, Nov. 9, when Don Snider took over the division, CBS News reported.
The Marshals Service is a Justice Department agency that hunts fugitives, protects federal courts and moves federal prisoners. The official who found the fruit worked directly under Marketos, according to Atlanta Black Star and CBS. The watermelon has been a tool of racist ridicule aimed at Black Americans since the years after emancipation, when it was turned into a caricature meant to mock freedom itself. Nobody who works in federal law enforcement can claim not to know what it means.
What is not known is who did it. Reporting so far does not establish whether Marketos placed the watermelon himself or whether someone under his supervision did. The agency has not said. Marketos’s biography has been taken off the Marshals Service website, and one source told CBS the agency expects to fire him. That expectation is a source’s account, not an announcement, and Marketos has not been charged with anything or found to have done anything. Neither outlet reported a response from him.
The agency’s statement is brief: “The alleged actions do not reflect the core values of the USMS: Justice, Integrity and Service.”
Inside the agency the incident has a nickname, “watermelon-gate”, and deputy marshals have told reporters it is beneath the service. That matters, and so does what the nickname does. A racist act aimed at one of the agency’s highest-ranking Black officials becomes a running joke about a scandal, and the person it was aimed at disappears from the story.
A senior Black official was targeted at work, and the people who run the agency know who he is. The Marshals Service owes him, and every Black deputy under him, more than a one-line statement about values. It should say who left the watermelon, whether anyone else knew, and what the Justice Department’s inspector general or the agency’s equal employment office is doing about it. If the division chief was involved, firing him is the minimum. If a subordinate was, the question becomes what kind of division makes that feel safe.
The agency has not said whether a formal investigation has been opened, or when it will report.
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