Originally Posted by
wphamilton
What I saw was officers haranguing them about bike licenses which, ordinance or no, they had no legitimate authority to. I wouldn't have gotten mouthy, but only because I'm older and wiser and know how that turns out. These are kids, being wronged by authority - backtalk should be expected.
If they're too unruly, just warn them off. The cops got that wrong also, because most of what they were doing was no big deal. Just the idea, the nerve of those kids, taking up the street was the gist of it. But that wasn't what the cops acted on; they acted on the license issue. You're implying that it was a pretext for the cop's disruption and heavy handed result, a pretext because they didn't or couldn't cite "riding like jerks". I'd tend to agree that it did look like they used the (probably illegal) ordinance as a pretext for punishing the kids.
If the kids behavior had been legal, I would also be POed at the LEOs. Watch the video again. Those kids could have been charged with "disorderly conduct", and it would probably stick.
New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice: 2C:33-2. Disorderly conduct
a. Improper behavior. A person is guilty of a petty disorderly persons offense, if with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof he
(1) Engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior; or
(2) Creates a hazardous or physically dangerous condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.
Subsection 2 would clearly describe the behavior of those kids. Instead one was detained and it appears that they were released without charges and the LEOs took a few bikes and told their owners to walk down to the station where they could pick them up.