Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "City's War on 'Sideshows' - 720 Tickets, 19 Impounds at ONE Event!" video.

@machintelligence It's that kind of thinking that's going to get this challenged and then ruled unconstitutional. Simply being in a close vicinity to this show does not constitute an offense that will stand up to scrutiny. The active participants being ticketed, arrested and their cars impounded likely will as this kind of behavior is generally already illegal pretty much everywhere in the US and has been for many decades, but watching and filming is constitutionally protected and the prosecution has to prove that each and every one of those tickets was appropriate for anybody that cares to challenge it. I don't think they'll win the cases and even if they just try that's going to be a massive amount of time that the officers won't be out there looking for traffic law violators.
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@kenbrown2808 Only because they passed a law doing so. There's a whole bunch of laws over the last couple centuries that were made, but ultimately ruled to be unconstitutional. And what about people who just get stuck when one of these takeovers is happening? How do you know who is there to watch and who is just stuck in the middle of it? I do think that it's reasonable to ticket and/or impound the vehicles of active participants, but the rest of them aren't themselves doing something that would otherwise be illegal. If they were doing things that are otherwise illegal, there wouldn't be the need for the law change.
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Honestly, I do think that it would be better just to accept that people want to do this and allow a safer place to do it.
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That's what I would like to know. How do they know who is and isn't there to watch? It's pretty clear that if you've got a car and a driver's license that you have the right to be on the public street. The intersection is being shut down by the individuals actively engaged in the show, the rest of the folks being there doesn't change that. It might add a bit of incentive, but the main audience is the other drivers that are participating and the people watching don't shut down these streets hoping that people will show up to put on a display.
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@pauliewalnuts2527 And, that would be covered by punishing the people actively participating in the shows. The people watching aren't shutting the intersection down hoping that people will take advantage of the closed intersection to drive recklessly. The watching and filming of the activity is clearly protected by the constitution. It's the thing that they're watching which isn't.
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Yes, burns, even minor ones, hurt a lot. It sounds like he's going to be OK though, which is good.
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It happens a lot in some parts of the world.
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Considering that for many years they allowed the bicyclists to do that every month with impunity, I'm not entirely sure why anybody would expect them to take it seriously. They don't even bother showing up to arrest shoplifters these days due to staffing levels and the local prosecutors refusing to prosecute if it's not a large amount of money.
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I do think that a distinction needs to be made between those that are actively participating and those that are just there. There's a whole host of constitutional problems with just arresting people for being present. Same goes for the tickets. People do have a constitutional right to be there on the sidewalks as well as film the thing to post on social media. I'm not sure how they know when they're writing the ticket whether this is a person encouraging it or is engaged in protected speech. And even if they are just filming it, that's still within their constitutional rights to do, provided that they do so from a place they're allowed to be. And given the traffic on the street, watching isn't going to close the street anymore than it is. Impound the cars of the people doing it and write them hefty tickets, that seems reasonable giving that this is a genuine risk to public safety. I've seen a video where one of the bystanders did get hit by one of the cars doing donuts. (Fortunately, he didn't seem to be injured)
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They don't really intend to. This is why crimes like possession are so problematic. If you've got something illicit you're automatically guilty whether or not you knew it was there or intended to have it. This is the same sort of thing, whether you watched, intended to watch you're guilty. It's really easy on the prosecutors as they don't need to bother to prove intent or even knowledge that a crime was being committed, just that you were there. Never mind whether you were intending to be there or were just caught up in the traffic and couldn't leave.
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@pauliewalnuts2527 But, that's already illegal, simply watching doesn't involve any other crimes and there's nothing to watch unless somebody else closes down the intersection to do this stuff.
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@valcaron But, the intersection is already being closed down by the people actively engaging in this activity. Whether or not 3rd parties are watching doesn't have much of an impact. It's not like this gets advertised widely ahead of time so that people can come.
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@davidh9638 Both practices are in the constitution, yes the hitchhiking isn't as explicit, but freedom to move about is in there. It's a shame that the courts have allowed it to be watered down to the point where it effectively doesn't exist these days. The whole TSA thing is completely unconstitutional and completely ineffective.
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