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Group Not On Board With Skating Arrest

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By MIKE WELLS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 4, 2007

TAMPA - The entire trip was "lame," skateboarder Billy Nelson said Friday morning after bailing his buddies out of Orient Road Jail.

First they were in a wreck, then he got a traffic ticket, then all four got arrested and sent to jail. It hardly seemed worth the thrill of spinning skateboard wheels on downtown Tampa's sidewalks, he said.

After driving from Ocala, the 19-year-old and his three friends were about five minutes from their destination, the Skatepark of Tampa, when he hit a car on Nebraska Avenue with his 2007 Dodge Magnum.

An hour later, they arrived at the skate park but discovered it was about to close.

"We were like, 'Dude, we did not come all the way out here just to skate for 25 minutes,'" Nelson said during a cell phone call on the way back to Ocala. "And so after it closed, we decided to go around the city."

On the way downtown, Nelson was stopped by a Tampa police officer and given an $80 ticket for driving with an expired license plate, he said.

Despite the setbacks, Nelson said he and his friends, Christopher Rothrock, 22, Louis Lieb, 19, and Justin Bayne, 20, still wanted to get in some skating.

They parked the car, got their boards out and were rolling down Ashley Drive when Tampa Officer Jeffrey Bartlett walked up to them.

"He started preaching at us, saying all us skateboarders screw up the sidewalks, the concrete and the rails," Nelson said.

Bartlett told them about the city's ordinance prohibiting skating on sidewalks in the business district, Nelson said.

They told the officer they didn't know about the ordinance because they were from out of town and assured him they would leave the area.

"He told us to get out of his town," Nelson said.

Nelson's Dodge Magnum was parked about a mile away in the Publix parking lot on Bayshore Boulevard.

On their way back to the car, Nelson said, they skated, stopped, skated and stopped. They got lost, and it was taking some time to make their way back to the car. More than an hour passed, he said.

That's when Bartlett spotted the same four riding their skateboards on a sidewalk at Jefferson and Jackson streets, according to arrest reports.

Nelson disagrees about the location.

"We were in a parking lot, just screwing around, you know, when this cop comes up and tells us to put our hands on the vehicle," Nelson said.

"I'm like, 'Dude, I don't know what we did wrong, but I don't think I should go to jail,'" Nelson said. "That's private property, and I don't think you arrest someone for that."

Businesses Complain

Police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said skateboarders have done expensive damage to the business district.

"We've had some problems with businesses complaining," she said. "Skateboarders ruined the granite at the Bank of America building, and I don't know how many thousands of dollars they spent to repair the damage."

The violation amounts to a second-degree misdemeanor of unlawful skateboarding. Typically, skaters are warned at least once before they are arrested and taken to jail, Davis said.

These skaters' boards were taken to the police evidence room for safekeeping, Bartlett's report states.

Unable to use the jail's phone to make long-distance calls to Ocala, the group contacted a friend's grandmother who lives locally, Nelson said.

Nelson was the first to post the $250 bail, and he took a cab to the Publix lot to retrieve his car.

"I don't think we should have been arrested," he said. "We weren't rude or talk back. We were actually pretty understanding in doing what they said."

Similar Incident

News of the arrests brought back memories for Cory Knowlton, 30, of Auburndale, who said it reminded him of an incident 12 years ago.

"When I was 18 and just in college, I was an avid skater and the same exact thing happened to me and three of my friends one night in Tampa," Knowlton said. "We never got a warning, no signs posted anywhere, and out of the blue, nine cop cars screeching in to take four kids to jail. ...Talk about a waste of city resources."

Knowlton was arrested Sept. 12, 1995, court records show.

He suggested that escalating fines are a better way to deal with the issue.

"For a situation like this, I believe that would be far more beneficial to the city and to the skateboarders while still getting the point across," he said.

Reporter Mike Wells can be reached at (813) 259-7839 or mwells@tampatrib.com.

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