At least, that seems to be the case in Minnesota. A friend sent an email about Stephan Orsak today and his story is also on BoingBoing. The photo to your right is Stephan Orsak with his bicycle. Orsak, a professional violinist, chose to ride his bicycle away from the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, on his way to visiting his daughter and grandchildren.
After being stopped by airport police for no apparent reason, having a discussion with them about his choice to ride a bike instead of driving, and receiving several sets of conflicting instructions from them, he was thrown to the ground, tasered twice, and had his glasses crushed in the process. Rather than re-telling his story, I’ll point you toward the relevant documents, which I read before I wrote this. They are:
- Orsak’s story, in his own words. Be sure to read through the comments for an idea of the diverse perspectives on whether or not the charges were justified. Some will scare you. What should scare you is knowing that such attitudes are not unusual in today’s US of A.
- Full Police Report/Narratives of the Incident
- Motion to Dismiss/Legal Arguments
- Links to photos, maps, route and related stories
- MN Bicycle Laws – Note that bicyclists are expected by law to ride on the road, respect traffic laws, and ride as close to the right as possible.
- MN Vehicle Laws
Jury selection begins for his trial on July 16th.
Some commenters on Orsak’s blogspot site seem to think that riding a bike is a “hobby”, instead of a legitimate mode of transportation. This follows on a trend I’ve seen more and more of lately — the bike-hating public, who thinks that people on bikes are some kind of perverse sector of society (yes, one commenter even said that Orsak was ‘gay and perverse’ — their words, not mine — for riding his bike) who live to make life difficult for the ‘righteous ones’ in auto-mo-biles.
I rode a bike as my primary mode of transportation all the way through high school and college. I didn’t get a drivers’ license until I was 18, and only then because not having it would have inconvenienced my mother. I rode to school, to work, to parks and to the beach, 20 miles or more away. I rode on the same streets that you drive on, fully cognizant that I had a duty to abide by the rules of the road, yield to other vehicles and signal my intentions just as they did. This was before bike lanes were the norm and somehow we all managed to get along.
Somewhere through the years, it became a “hobby”? When, exactly, was that? I gave it up when I was nearly run down by a guy in a big truck and I had The Eldest in a child seat on it. Inhabiting the same road as the big boys carried too much risk for me to put my child on a bike and ride on the same streets which had felt so safe to me as a child.
In these days of $3+/gallon gas, why are we making targets out of bicyclists? And when did we start living in a country where someone riding a bike, posing no threat to the officers (by their own account there was no gesture worthy of a taser hit, much less the rest of it), breaking NO LAW, can be treated in such a shameful fashion?
This is another ‘get the word out’ kind of thing. Orsak shouldn’t be charged with anything, much less six counts of trumped-up self-justificatory pseudocrap intended to cover up unfair, unlawful and unjust acts on the part of the airport police.
Ordinarily, this is where I’d qualify my post by saying I’m sure most police officers are wonderful, law-abiding citizens. I’m not sure I think that anymore. It seems that the paranoia and apathy of recent years, combined with paranoid leadership are encouraging the good guys to become the bad guys.
Technorati Tags: stephen orsak, orsak, bicycling, minneapolis, police state, police action, injustice
