“I told you guys you’re supposed to have licenses,” one officer says in the clip as the cops attempt to get the boys to surrender their bikes. “The sergeant warned you about your bikes, so you guys are warned. I gave you a warning.”
One teen gives in. “Drop the bike or you’re gonna get arrested too,” says another cop in the background, addressing the other boys who are slower to dismount.
In a longer video posted to YouTube, the boys are repeatedly promised that they won’t lose their bikes. The teen who first complied is then arrested, and all of their bicycles are taken by the cops.
“You know that we told you guys to stay on the sidewalk,” the cop says in a video exchange with one of the teens who filmed their conversation when he returned to get his bike. “You guys knew that you were going against traffic. It is for your safety. You think I want to be here taking bikes away? Like, this is so asinine. Like, we have so much better stuff to do with our time.”
She is correct on most counts. It is asinine, and the Perth Amboy Police Department definitely has better stuff to do with their time.
But she didn’t stop there: “Is your bike registered with us? I don’t have to give it back to you,” she notes, harking back to the licensing scuffle referenced during the first confrontation. “You have the receipt to prove that that bike is your bike? I don’t have to give it back to you.”
Hellbound and Down 