The video makes this pretty clear. A 13 year old boy is choked and arrested for skateboarding.The video shows policeman Williams choking one of the skateboarders after forcing him to the ground. Later he chases and wrestles two others while holding them in a headlock.
The policeman can be heard threatening one person with pepper spray if he moved. In the background you can hear several voices ask why are they being arrested. One teen runs away from the officer, he is then chased down.
To be fair there is more to this story. The two arrested are 21 and 19 years of age. The 21 year old is being charged with misdemeanor battery after allegedly pushing a 67-year-old city employee during the altercation.
Did this cop go "overboard" ? I'd say so. What do you think?
This video is obviously from youtube.com, who allows posting of the videos from their site.
One article that lists the details on this is at:
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/officer-accused-of-choking-skateboarder/20070627123709990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
They have on site voting for people who care to take their poll.
Personally I'd like to hear thoughts on this from anyone with an opinion.
UPDATE
Here are two more links with more extensive coverage of the arrest:
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOKb2PQs4kc
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT6z0dQ_-pg
There are probably a few more out there, but these seemed to show enough for me to see my opinion was right on.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH6AYVn2yw4
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977041243
The 21 year old who was also there, is the one accused of being charged with misdemeanor battery. (no clue on if he pushed the
67-year-old) Very true, True American, if he did that off to jail with him.
Yes, the officer was out of control. You made a good point regarding officers hours.
Don't officers work 12 hour shifts similar to nurses? Hours set aside, the stress on the job has to be tremendous.
Here is a pdf by the U.S Dept of Justice on "The Effects of Shift Work Schedules on Police Officer Health, Safety and Performance"
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/sl000702.pdf
It's actually pretty scary. (Which is probably why police officers are screened to be able to handle things.) Overtime is listed as a requirement.
I think some adults started bothering the skateboarders, the adults were not aware of skateboard day. (thats what it seemed like)
I can't say how patient I would be in the officers situation, although I can say for sure I would not be choking anyone.
Joe, the 12 year old did not break the law. If he did, he should be punished.
Good points as well Julian.
I will check out your article Brian.
If skateboarding is the worse thing these kids were doing, why not let them do it?
If its not safe on the sidewalks make a large area for the kids to go nearby.
I don't know how it is in other parts of the country but in some parts of the Southeast, where communities have actually made skateboard parks or large sections of regular parks have been concreted, ramped and such for boarders, rather than the kids just having a nice place and having fun, a couple of them I'm familiar with have become havens for buying and selling various drugs and for regular occurrences of minor ( i.e., no firearms) violence between some of the kids. This is the reason that some residents don't like them, although I would hope that the ones I am familiar with are NOT typical! These seem to be unsupervised, a place where parents can just send the kids away to be rid of them for a few hours.
Sad.
We have a few large skateboard parks in San Diego, but none near my general area.
(under 12 miles away)
There isn't really anywhere for kids 9 & up to play where I live. The supervised skate parks are nice here, and I believe they charge.
He appeared to fancy himself a TV wrestler when he grabbed the two kids at once, and the second cop, grabbing the kid's shirt, must have been feeling really macho!
I would wonder - and I don't think this has been raised - if the cops were On The Crime Scene, when the boarders were first approahcing, WHY didn't the cops simply say, Hey - you're violating a city ordinance; take your boards somewhere else. Then, if they became argumentative, he could have ticketed or arrested as necessary. And after viewing the clips a few times, I think if I'd been there I would have probably encouraged the kids to flee in all directions and leave the cops empty handed. I'd have also offered to use my Leatherman to cut off the plastic cuffs. So much for my faithful law & order image, eh?
Oh yea great idea, get yerself a nice felony. What if you did that and all of a sudden that dude grabs something and attacks the officer, you might as well kiss your life goodbye for the next 10-20 years.
Yes this officer lost control. I think he needs to be sent to a psychologist and I would want to know what the work environment is with that agency. As far as the legal part of this incident, thats what the courts are for, not rebel citizens with leathermans, do that and you loose big time and those defendants will loose as well.
Of course - then we wouldn't have this thread and wouldn't know about True American's, ahem, tastes in outerwear, or entertainment. On which topic, the only thing I dislike about wearing the head to toe leather outfits is that they squeak sometimes, and everyone else on the elevator acts funny...
Thank you Julian for pointing out there are several more videos at youtube.com with different perspectives. I am going to check out the other versions.
Seeing only the first video, I still thought the officer went overboard. I am now curious to see how much further "off the edge" he went.
The policeman was very unprofessional all the way around. He over reacted, then jusified his behavior (or more likely tried to) by making the arrests. Then,
by leaving the teenager in handcuffs there by himself and then walking away also was b.s
That puts the teen in the police officers responsibility.
IF the teen had ran and got hit by a car it would have be the police officer's fault.
If anyone tried to stop him, other than the police officer he could have claimed assault.The teen was basically assaulted.It did not look like the kids resisted arrested, it sure seemed like they wanted to know they were being arrested. The did not say "You are not arresting me" or anything like that.
One of the videos was lengthy and really showed the whole thing, the police officer overreacted, drastically.
I really didn't see so much provoking.The first video does not give much discription, as to the start of the incident. But, when you see the other videos there really wasn't much that happened. Nothing to warrant the police officer to choke the kid thats for sure.
Because a kid skateboarding is not grounds for arrest.A warning or ticket or most.
If it was skateboard day, how could they be arrested for skateboarding? They couldn't, hence the "resisting arrest" charge. I doubt that charge will stick.