bahula03

Submitted to facts in that are in evidence: your poor reading comprehension Congrats.

AdkMtnMonster

Uhh... did you actually click on the link in the first post? I'm guessing you did not, or, if you did, that you did not read a single word in the article.

Here are the first few parts of the story, from the link...

• Javier Lopez, 18, was arrested during a group ride near Oveido, Florida, this past weekend after he rolled through a stop sign.
• The arresting officer’s dash cam and body cam footage was made public this week.
• Lopez was in jail for seven hours before his father, who was also on the ride that morning, posted bail of $8,500

WhyFi

The stop sign at the start of the dash cam video clearly says "All Way" so we have to assume that there's a stop sign that we can't see in the shadows on the left side of the frame. Regardless, this wasn't a blazingly stupid and dangerous run through the intersection; definitely an overreaction, which I can only read as the cops going all "respect mah authoritay!"

GreenAnvil

That is a valid point, however, sticking to the evidence provided by the police officer (the videos) the evidence is inadmissible since it does not prove that a sign was actually posted on the side of the intersection the cyclists were coming from. A defense attorney could well argue someone removed the sign, or that even the cops removed it for their “run the sign trap”.

Point is the videos prove nothing, just that the cop told a couple of kids on bikes to stop.

Chad991

Enlarge the video, far left of the screen, clearly a stop sign...gotta frame by frame as it is in the first couple second...made me take a second and third look,lol.

GreenAnvil

Just did. I see the yellow arrows sign indicating to the oncoming traffic (from the road that the kids turned into) that that the road ends and you gotta turn right or left. I also see some sort of squared sign, but not the octagonal-shape stop sign. And mostly glare reflections from the police dash cam, but no sign.

I’ll look for it on my large monitor screen.

Edit: Nope, still can't see it. I see a squared-shape sign, but that's not a stop sign (assuming we're referring to the sign to the far left right in front of the yellow-arrow warning sign). And the sign shouldn't be at the other end of the intersection but rather at the start of the intersection (before) for oncoming traffic. Another comment is, if you advance the video to the 28-second mark, you will see the stop sign for the road the kids turned into. Usually, all-stop signs refer to four-stop or three-way stop signs, and according to the Connecticut DOT:

"All-way stops are a low cost form of intersection control. Stop signs are placed at each road approaching an intersection requiring all drivers to stop before proceeding through the intersection. All-way stops are commonly referred to as four-way or three-way stops. The first vehicle to reach the intersection should move forward first. If two vehicles reach the intersection at the same time, the driver on the right would proceed first."

If you look at the stop sign (again, 28-second mark) there's no all-way sign under the stop sign as you see for the one at the beginning of the video. So, in the context of the video, the all-way sign at the beginning of the video just means "if another car gets to stop sign at the same time you do (the road to the right), s(he) has the right of way."

So, I didn't see the stop sign that you are referring to, even while looking at the video on a 30-something inch monitor. Your eyes are definitely much better than mine.

Another edit: Looked now at the 2nd video. See a sign there but still looks squarish to me. But I’ll concede that may be it.

BengalCat

My sincere apologies to you.

You are correct, I did not read the article, but only, literally, glanced at it and then for reasons I don't recall clicked on the youtube video that was further down the thread and watched that.

Thank you for pointing out my significant mistake or errors and in assisting me in learning a lesson to carefully pay more attention to something if I am going to comment on it. (Something I grossly failed to do in this case.)

Separate, from above, after reading the article I was disappointed to see the article's author decision to interject or attempt to make race an issue.

WhyFi

Knock yourself out - I'm not looking to Perry Mason the case, just looking at it from the most likely scenario.

GreenAnvil

From the article (and the video):

• both videos show the two riders rolling through the stop
• Matre (the officer) asks Perpinan if he had stopped at the stop sign. When he says yes... (What? Didn't you just see that BOTH ran through the intersection together???)
• Matre doesn’t speak to him again, nor does he attempt to arrest him for fleeing alongside Lopez.
• In the police vehicle, Matre asks Lopez if he’s an American citizen. (He didn't ask the same question to Perpinan.)

You're right, the author of the article isn't shy to point out that "the optics of the facts" aren't great, but we could infer the same by looking at the facts.

GreenAnvil

Cool then. But if the glove don't fit.... people have gotten away with worse and all that the defense team did was poke holes at the evidence and sow confusion.

Velo Vol 

wut

The officer witnessed the traffic violation. He was standing right there.

GreenAnvil

Well, that’s that.

WhyFi

Sure, but none of us are representing the kid, so it's just a bunch of gratuitous speculation and wheel spinning over an exceptionally low percentage circumstance. But hey - it's winter in the northern hemisphere.

GreenAnvil

You’re 100% correct!

Cyclist0108

That says it all.

GreenAnvil

Failure to obey.

If I had a dollar for every fast club ride where all of the alphas blow by stop signs and red lights... And the rest of us do it too so we don’t get dropped.

Where are the cops when you really need them, other than by falling on speed traps or having someone call them on you on some bogus charge? If these cops don’t have anything better to do than to patrol low traffic roads in the middle of nowhere and then channel their boredom induced frustration on some kids out on a cycling training ride I’d say that’s an awful waste of taxpayer dollars.

GreenAnvil

I just watched the 2nd video in full. Please.... The guy lied about stopping, but so did the other guy (according to the report). And the police officer saw what both did. The only thing I heard in there that could potentially be taken as “disrespectful” was a WTF, which I’d say is par for the course given the circumstances. I couldn’t understand most of what was being said in the background by the other riders, but it wasn’t a mutiny. Dad was very polite. On TV I’ve heard far worse from leaders and those that should be examples and nobody gives a ....

What an unnecessary episode. Someone won d!ck of the year award.

StanSeven

Thread was moved to Advocacy and Cycling from Road Cycling. I cleaned up political content as well. If you want to discuss race and impacts, this gets moved to P&R. Or you can start a thread there.

DrIsotope

One wonders why the cops see the need to so actively defend this sorta-intersection in the middle of nowhere. The cops are also parked on gravel, which dead-ends into trees in about 300ft. So it's a bend with two gravel driveways joining it.

bpcyclist

Then, why charge him at all? Why put him and his family through all that stress and inconvenience, potentially leave him with a felony charge on his record, only to just dismiss the whole thing? What exactly is the point of that exercise?

LE and prosecutors have way, way, way too much power in this country to bring bogus or BS charges, withhold exculpatory evidence, conduct off-the-books "investigations" and a whole host of other varieties of misconduct, including egregious civil rights violations. Citizens without massive financial resources have basically no recourse to deal with this type of misconduct. Way too much unchecked power.

GreenAnvil

There’s the stop sign! Thx for sharing this view (courtesy of Google maps, I suppose?).

Yeah, that makes no sense at all.

Drillium Dude 

Your post is indicative of the kind of ignorance many people have to what the signs right in front of their faces actually mean. The stop sign seen from the police vehicle is clearly marked "STOP - ALL WAY". That means everybody stops. All directions. Elementary.

Commence to editin'

DD

Seattle Forrest

I'm surprised this got moved to A&S and not P&R. It seems like the central issue here is police overreach.

Kimmo 

But not everybody gets busted. Although we can't talk about that aspect here, because that's political, and somehow having this discussion while omitting the most salient detail isn't.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-police-itself

CB HI

And a complete waste of police man power. Poor judgement on the felony arrest that will waste the jail's, DA's and judge's time.