A message from the cops: PLEASE obey the barricades!

I just received the following letter from Sgt. David Walker, motorcycle cop and cyclist, regarding some bicycling activity he witnessed yesterday during the filming of Machete. Oh shit, they're ACTUALLY making Machete right now, dope! Anyway, on to the letter regarding his observations:

Yesterday I was off but working the movie being filmed in town, Machete’s. We had San Jacinto closed at 5th, down to 2nd. What they were filming was a short car chase, so they had background traffic driving NORTH in all 3 lanes, the cop car, bad guy and camera car going SOUTH weaving through the others. So within the enclosed area the potential for cars going in odd directions was very high. At 4th, traffic could run East & West but it was barricaded across the south side of the intersection with “road closed” posted. The assigned officer was a little south of the barricades. A girl on a bicycle came right through the barricade without slowing and the officer waved his arms and got her stopped. She said, whoa dude ! He told her the road was closed and she would have to go out and go around. She called him an F’ing Nazi.. so he told her she needed to leave before he wrote her for disregarding the barricade.

A few hours later they were winding down and had compressed the road closer to 3rd, between San Jacinto and Brazos. I had moved up to the officer sitting at the barricade stretched across 3rd on the San Jac side. Inside this block is a LOT of people and equipment, including 2 wrecked cars. A bicycle messenger I believe by the red shoulder bag, also female, came down San Jacinto and zipped right behind us and through a gap in the barricade. I yelled hey, but she didn’t slow or turn around. I asked the officer working that spot if she was working with the crew. He said he didn’t think so. She hardly slowed down, but to get across to Brazos she had to make a large “S” around everything. I wanted to write her a ticket so bad.

During the day we had several bikes approach but generally they would make some attempt at eye contact with me, I would send them East / West if the movie was active, tell them OK to the next cross street otherwise. I just don’t understand how these two could have a thought process that said none of this applies to me. Really sad part is IF they would have gotten hit, they would want to sue the police and the movie because it was OUR fault.

Be careful out there y'all, I figure a movie like this uses lots of bladed things, explosives, and flipping cars. Hate to see a biker get hurt because they blew a barricade and ran into a stunt gone wrong.

Thanks for the letter, David. Austin derives some decent income from shutting down streets for film productions, and they hire after-hours cops for security, so PLEASE don't mess with them when they're doing their thing. Plus, in this case THEY'RE MAKING MACHETE! An honest-to-god Danny Trejo action vehicle! If you fuck this up for me I'll be so damn pissed.