Interesting coincidence...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1189406/posts#11
*hippie voice
Skateboarding is NOT a crime, man!!!!
/hippie voice
Thrown in the clink for skateboarding in front of one's home . . . is this what happens when peace officers become LEOs instead?
Rodney King!....Rodney King!.....Rodney King!.....
A TTI CA!....... A TTI CA!.......A TTI CA!
Pretty soon, walking on the sidewalk while listening to an IPOD will be deemed dangerous and illegal.
The county should make a skate park to keep them off the streets.
I got tired of the local yoots skateboarding in our grocery store parking lot. A few handfuls of coarse gravel took care of the issue. You scatter it around and it makes skateboarding impossible. But hey, I guess if I was a $60,000 per year civil servant cop with a retirement package, I'd pretend it was a complex problem too.
Look at skateboards as bicycles and it wouldn't be long before some of these overly energetic teens actually injure and/or maim a pedestrian or animal. Kids need to find skate parks in their neighborhoods. We used to have this problem in Indianapolis where these hordes of kids would pick an office plaza and "fly through the air," bump into pedestrians and run delivery personnel off the sidewalk...that is until the police banned the practice.
We homeschooled, as did my sister who lived a couple doors down.
One day, mid-morning, everybody seemed antzy, so we called a phys ed break and sent the three boys out to run around the one mile lap in front of our house (we live on a golf course and there are two fairways and greens directly in front of our houses, circled by a road, and the distance around them is a one mile lap).
Anyway, we can see them as they run all the way around, but they were probably 10, 12, and 13, so we weren't paying lots of attention.
Next thing I know there's a police car in my driveway with the three boys in the backseat.
The cop that stopped them wasn't our regular community police officer (who knows the boys and knows they're homeschooled).
He thought the boys weren't telling the truth about being homeschooled and were truant.
Needless to say, it was a big deal to ride in the back of the police car, even though they were a little shaken up by the whole incident.
its a sideWALK you are suppose to WALK on it. though if they are not really bothering anyone i don't see the big deal. the cops probably had trouble with skateboards before.
the kid was on the radio in boston today and he called the cops "jerk faces" hahaha , those wacky kids.
I wonder if they weren't engaged in some destruction of property. . . Most cities that have outlawed skateboarding did so because the kids jump and slide their skateboards down curbs and railings, scratching them up. I've seen kids do this with bikes too, by putting a metal rod on the back wheel that extends a few inches from the axle on either side. They jump the bike, catch it and balance on that rod, and slide down a railing.
I doubt that they were arrested for skateboarding since the officer isn't likely to be given that much discretion. More likely they were arrested for breaking a law, probably a law against skateboarding. Don't cry to the officer or the court that are just doing their job. Cry instead to your legislator and the guy YOU elected.
You can read that as "compliant lap-dog reporter omits to check up on lying weasel unnamed town officials."
Let's see- the town has an ordinance, the kids broke it, the cops enforced it- this is a problem?
From the kid's radio talk, he probably called the cops worse than jerkface when they spoke to him. With some cops this will raise a freindly verbal warning to a full-fledged booking.
Being the benificiary of a broken elbow inflicted by a kid riding a bike on a sidewalk, I support the idea of limiting the areas where bikes and skateboards intersect with pedestrians.
We have skateboarders in my town including my son who's 12. He knows there are some skaters he's not allowed to run with and pretty much avoids them. The worst thing is all it takes is one rude skateboarder to give the rest of them a bad name. My son and his friends got in trouble with a local woman in charge of some public property because she said "a" skateboarder had busted a picnic table to make a ramp and she wanted someone to rat him out. My son told her it wasn't one of them but told me later he did know who did it but he sure wasn't going to tell her after they way she approached him.
Some skaters are bad and it does promote a culture of rebellion but I have found the majority of these boys to be nice to me if I actually smile first and ask ask them how they're doing or ask about their boards.
Michael Maxwell, Ryan's father, said he raced to court to pick up his son after he was told the boy would be held overnight if he did not arrive before 3:30 p.m.
I can't say that I was ever arrested. However, if I was, the first thing that my parents would have done is come and get me. The above statement implies that this guy's Dad had other things to do.
bttt