Give me a break. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t protect you when you’re breaking the law. You’re skateboarding where you shouldn’t be? Confiscate the skateboard. You’re drinking and driving multiple times, the car belongs to the State. Reckless driving on a motorcycle? Maybe you shouldn’t have a bike. The 4th wasn’t intended to keep those who are breaking the law to continue to be able to do so.
ETA: Note the word “unreasonable” in the Amendment.
Being a scofflaw about skateboarding and repeatedly operating a dangerous vehicle while impaired are equivalent now and “reasonable” applies to the same degree in both cases?
I can go to the store, buy a sick-pack of beer and walk home with it. I can’t pop open a bottle and swig it on the way home but if I decided to, a cop couldn’t confiscate it? I’d be lucky if that’s all he did, especially if I kept calling him “man” and “dude” and kept insisting I wasn’t doing anything. “You didn’t have to take my beer away, dude, I wasn’t doing anything!”
Yes.
Let’s assume some numbers here, for the sake of the argument. To put a pure dollar amount on it, let’s say the average insurance payout for a DUI crash is $100k, and the car causing the damage cost $10k. What’s a skateboard cost these days, $100? Is it unreasonable to think a skateboard could do $1k worth of damage? A cursory Google search shows that it’s not, and from Wiki:
If I am forced to forfeit my motorcycle for popping wheelies on city streets, guess who’s not going to be popping wheelies on city streets?
Of course a cop could confiscate it, public drinking and open containers are illegal. In addition, a person, even if he’s only walking along and drinking, has the potential to became disruptive and/or a dangerous, to himself and others, so the beer should be confiscated.
Yes, I agree the kids should not have been skateboarding, especially if there were signs stating that, but the kid’s continuing to have the skateboard after he’s told not to skateboard there and obeys, does not constitute a lawbreaking activity like public drinking and having an open container do in the first place do.
Your first problem is you’re buying the sick-packs; that’s trouble from the get-go. 
No analogy is perfect, but I notice the cop had no interest in confiscating his friends’ skateboards and even complimented his friends for having “brains in their heads” and as I pointed out before, it’s curious we can’t hear or see most of how this kid was behaving but the cop clearly had a case of the ass with this one kid and not his friends, who were clearly just as lawbreaking as our little Eric Bush was.
That tells me Eric needs some fathering and he got some.
Officer doughnut maybe isn’t going to win officer of the year, but I’ve gotten worse smackdowns from my highschool teachers for bucking the system and not wearing a collared shirt. It’s not like this kid was beaten, pepper-sprayed or tasered.
Skateboarding where they were skateboarding was illegal. In addition, a person, even if he’s only skateboarding in a straight line, has a potential to be dangerous to himself and others. Why shouldn’t the skateboard be confiscated?
How is me drinking a single beer in public fundamentally different than repeatedly ignoring a law against skateboarding in a specific area? They’re both illegal, and the object supporting said illegal activity can be taken away. There’s a reason* it’s going to be taken away, so that as soon as the cop turns his back, you don’t hop back on your skateboard and open the next beer.
*Reason: Root word for unreasonable.
I’m not talking what you fear in the hypothical or anticipatory sense, I’m talking the law as it stands regarding actual outcomes and what’s considered reasonable and unreasonable. It’s illegal from the start to operate a vehicle in a dangerous manner, just as it’s illegal to operate a vehicle under the influence, so it’s reasonable that someone engaging in those acts should be subject to confiscatory laws even if no accident, injuries, or payouts ever occur.
It is unreasonable to confiscate the skateboard in this case if (i) the kid stops when told (let me stress - he shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place); and (ii) no proof or even charge that he’s caused any damages you’ve described has occurred. No, one is no allowed to damage public property, but until occurs no charge can be made.
As far as the monetary damages amounts argument you make, I’m not sure a proportional analysis (i.e., 10,000/100,000 vs. 100/1,000) has any bearing, in terms of the reasonableness or unreasonableness of confiscating property.
There’s nothing reasonable about seizing a skateboard unless that skateboard is being used as a weapon. Should trespassers’ shoes be seized on a whim, too? How about the cops just nab someone’s car every time they run a stop sign?
A bottle costs about a dollar–maybe $1.50 if you have expensive taste–and owning the open bottle is a crime in and of itself. If drinking in public were the same as murder, the equivalent action would be surrounding the victim in a force field right before the bullet is about to hit him: the confiscation actually completely cancels out the crime. OTOH, confiscating a transportation device because it’s used in the wrong place is absurd. What if the kid were riding his bike on the freeway shoulder instead? Should the officer just grab the bike?
Yes. Care to give us an actual cite, with real numbers?
“Most”? It might be time to check your hearing aid.
That argument is absurd unless you assume, against all evidence to the contrary, that the only thing that cop cared about was equal enforcement of the law.
That’s makes it all the more wrong and shows a vindictiveness on the peace officers’s part, and a lack of desire to adjudicate the situation according to the law and towards a peaceful resolution.
After all, he apparently did see the friends skateboarding too, but didn’t take their boards, which tells me stealing Eric’s board was just to “show him who’s boss.”
Not to mention assaulting Eric to get at the board, without asking for it or demonstrating any compelling reason why the law would back him up.
At the end, does the cop say, “Are you taping this? This better not end up on youtube?”
If so, that’s the funny right there.
Why are you so hung up on the whole “Dude” thing? As disrespectful terms go, it’s about as mild as you can get. Besides, that’s just how a lot of kids talk. He geuninely may not have had any idea that he was being disrespectful. Moreover, that joke and a disgrace of an officer should have been aware of this. It’s his job to deal with people from all walks of life, not just polite middle-class kids who have a firm grasp of ettiquette. Anyway, this is all a moot point. Rivieri’s reaction was grossly disproportionate and in no way justified. At all.
And why are so many American’s seemingly so terrified of their own police? I mean, I’m reading some pretty shocking stuff here. Citizens so cowed by their own public servants that they daren’t register the slightest disagreement in the face of abuse from power-tripping pigs because “They’ve got the night-stick”. Well, yeah they’ve got the night stick but if they use it for any reason other than self defence or crime prevention then they’ll lose their fucking job. They certainly have no warrent to use it in the face of perceived “disrespect”, especially if it’s as nebulous as it seems to be in this case. Maybe if some more people took a stand and said, “Actually, no. You don’t talk to me like that. Do it again and I’ll have your badge” incidents like this wouldn’t occur.
Also, just out of curiosity, if the kid had said “No-one talks to me like that. Give me your badge number so I can complain about you.” What could he have expected to happen?
Sure. Googling skateboard property damage, the first hit is:
http://www.coastnews.com/f007.htm
Adding amount to the keywords yields:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2005/07/25/focus5.html
If they didn’t cause property damage, skatestoppers would not exist.
That’s absurd. The cops can’t confiscate the pot growing in my backyard unless I’m using the pot as a weapon? Oh, too rich. I’m imagining a pot plant beating someone to death. Take that, “bap, bap, bap!”
Huh? I’m not sure what you’re on about but the cop didn’t confiscate everyone’s skateboard. Just the one kid. Often when cops are dealing with kids they have to assume a hard-ass parental role more than a hyper legalistic “what can I do with this adult” role.
You want kids held to the same standards as adults? Do you think this kid got a ticket and had to appear before a court?
See, if this had happened in Pittsburgh, and had involved a certain lieutenant I know, it would have been very simple.
Lt. Pliskin: HEY!
Kid: What’s up, dude?
Lt. Pliskin: You can’t skate here.
Kid: I’m not doing anything.
Lt. Pliskin: You can’t ride your skateboard here. There’s a skate park at [location]. Don’t let me see you here again with that board.
Kid: Yes, sir.
It sounds trite, just written out like that, I know. But it’s his voice and his bearing that make the impression. I mean, this is a guy who calls the cashier at a drive-through “ma’am.” He commands respect because he gives respect. (He would also make that uniform look cool.)
Granted, he’s also an ex-Army Ranger with years of training in jujitsu whose Army nickname was Snake (hence the pseudonym I gave him). But then not many people are those things, and cops still manage to command respect even without those credentials. As I said in my earlier post, the cop in the video didn’t come off like a cop at all. He was not in control of the situation. That’s why he had to say what he said multiple times.
Maybe they should make it part of police academy training: how to conduct oneself in dealing with civilians. I don’t mean the “Don’t forget his civil rifghts!” kind of training; I’m sure they get that already. I mean being coached on how to project their voice, how to stand and walk with authority, and how to defuse a situation using as few words as possible. Might be worth it in the long run.
On preview: George Kaplan, do you remember the university library incident, the first tazing? Remember the library worker who was asking for the officers’ badge number, and was ignored (IIRC)? And people thought he was being a buttinski and should have stayed out of it? That’s how foreign that concept is nowadays.
Actually, what he got was roaring abuse, a couple of veiled death threats, the threat of imprisonment, a half nelson, and a couple of insults flung at his family for good measure. I’m just going by memory. I could have missed some stuff. That’s not fathering in my book. That’s just simple bullying. This cop’s a bully. He needs to go. End of story.
Actually, Rilchiam, even though I was looking at it from the civil rights perspective, your post supports what I’m saying.
Police officers should definitely take charge (voice, stance, etc.), but in an effort to defuse and end the situation, not escalate it to something else over something that has nothing to do with enforcing the law.
I think summonses would have been appropriate, given to all of the skateboarders. What happened to the one kid who got singled out for only acting like a kid was not appropriate.
It’s a law enforcement officer’s duty to be authoritative and act under the law, not to decide to be someone’s father.
Really? That’s harsh.