YPSILANTI, Mich.-Skateboarding tickets might seem like the bane of adolescents but as more adults are turning to bamboo and wheels as a serious option for transportation or recreation many 20-somethings are finding themselves in a situation usually reserved for the under 15 crowd.
The walk through City Hall to get a skateboard out of police impound is both scary and humbling at 13, at age 21 the walk just feels ridiculous. A $50 fine for skateboarding is draconian and unnecessary especially in the city where being caught with a bag of marijuana is a $25 ticket. What makes the matter even worse is that many people aren't even clear on what the law actually says.
A quick dig through the city municipal code found that the only ordinance regarding skateboards was buried at the bottom of a section about parking for motorcycles. The ordinance says that the city council “may by resolution designate locations and times in which skateboards may not be operated on sidewalks or other public property". It also gives police the power to confiscate a skateboard until the ticket is paid and if the person paying the ticket is a minor they also need to bring in a signed note from a legal guardian.
The original ordinance that was enacted on July 5, 1988 set the maximum fine for skateboarding at $65 but the law was amended in 2002 and this clause was removed and the penalty was reduced.
The ordinance came into existence when a group of residents who were concerned with the sport's high risk for injury and the hazard to pedestrians tied it into a new motorcycle ordinance during a low key city council meeting. This is a common legislative ploy used to quietly enact unpopular legislation.
Even with the ordinance in place it is rarely enforced and frequently broken; the raw number of skateboarders makes ticketing all but the most blatant offenders impractical. There are places in Ann Arbor where it is legal to skateboard such as parks and residential areas; however the vast majority of skateboarding seems to be done downtown. A law that can only be enforced some of the time is a bad law; by leaving the decision of when a law is going to be enforced up the discretion of the individual officer the door is open for discrimination and corruption.
The law also fails to realize that even a novice skateboarder has more control and requires less space to stop than a bicyclist and is therefore less hazardous to pedestrians. It also does not acknowledge that people who participate in the sport accept that personal injury is one of its inherent risks. Because a person has decided that riding a piece of wood with wheels on it sounds like a good idea does not mean that they need a nanny-cop to confiscate it for their own good.
The time to do something about this backwards law is now. I propose that those who oppose the law engage in civil disobedience by skateboarding in illegal areas as often as possible. This would compound the difficulties that already plague its enforcement and would further demonstrate the futility of the law. Like Percy Shelley said in his poem the Masque of Anarchy "And shake your chains to the Earth like dew... Ye you are many and they are few."
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