SPEEDWAY, Ind — A viral trend is taking over TikTok with videos of teens stealing items from schools like doors, signs and even sinks, especially from bathrooms. The challenge is called “devious lick.”
The social media craze is now happening off school property and local parks have become the next target.
“We deal with occasional vandalism off and on but nothing like this,” said Tammy Smith, the Speedway Parks director.
Speedway has two parks and both park bathrooms have been vandalized multiple times in the last week.
“It started off innocent enough. They were removing the tank lids and putting them into the trash can, but by the end of the week, it escalated to smashing the tank lids, smashing the soap dispensers off the wall, smashing the sink faucet,” Smith said.
There have been reports of teens also removing hoses out of toilets and on Sunday a pipe was damaged, which caused major flooding.
“We figured it’s thousands of dollars in just the last week from the vandalism,” Smith said.
The parks department has tried using industrial-strength zip ties to keep the toilet lids on and reinforced security cameras after they were damaged, too. Smith said her department financially can’t keep it up and have no choice but to lock the bathrooms.
“They are only going to be open during limited times because we can’t afford to continue replacing toilets, sinks and cleaning up these messes,” she said. “We can’t be here all the time, so we do need the community to be our eyes and ears.”
Speedway Parks Department will open the bathroom if there is a special event, otherwise, they will remain closed. They ask you to contact them at least five days in advance if you have an event.
WTHR also reached out to other parks in the area. Many have said they are not having issues yet but are monitoring the situation.
TikTok is trying to discourage users against the "devious lick" challenge saying it violates their rules.
They are removing content and redirecting hashtags to their community guidelines. They are also asking people to quote "please be kind to your school and teachers."