Update on the Critical Mass Arrest, plus more pictures AND VIDEO!

I just heard back from the father of the kid who got arrested early on in the Critical Mass ride, and here's what he has to say:

Hey Jason -- it was my son, Peter, McCallum HS junior, who got arrested the the Halloween CM ride. Good kid, loves his bike. With a bunch of his buddies, he's into fixed gears and loves to ride. He is in fact still in jail at Garner-Betts. He was given a ticket for not stopping at a red light and has been charged with failure to obey a lawful police order, and I also believe "attempt to elude," which from our discussions with other riders is completely not true. He'll be in jail until 1 pm Monday when he has a court hearing.

The charges are grossly unfair and we will defend him. As far as we know, there was not provocation of the officer -- he was part of a column of riders who went through a light. The officer used a patrol car to corral Peter and other riders, forced them up on the curb, and I understand drove the police car onto the sidewalk to cut him off before making the arrest. A dangerous move, I believe.

They have refused to let him out and refused to allow us bring him his school books so he can keep up with school while he cools his jets in jail. (Maybe they're not used to a kid who wants to do his homework while he sits in jail!) He seems in good spirits.

Anyway, just wanted to fill in the details a bit for you.

Peter
The Dad

Peter (the elder) gave me his permission to post this letter since so many of you have been inquiring after the status of his son. Short version, they arrested a MINOR because he ran a red light on his bicycle and maintained cohesion with the flow of vehicular traffic. As of now they've held him for over 60 hours, and he has yet to have a court hearing. That is INSANE, and is the very definition of police state. What's next, they're going to hold us for 72 hours because we cross the street in the wrong spot? Because we don't take part in the daily '2 minutes hate'? If anyone has any pictures, video, or witness statements they'd be willing to provide to as evidence, please let him know.

I've posted the officers information to the ATXBS Wall of Shame, as I truly believe he is deserving of it. Recklessly charging a cop car into a crowd of cyclists in an effort to force them into parked cars or the curb is no way to perform crowd control, Officer Goodwin. Please don't endanger the lives of the populace next time you decide to take an ego trip in your car. Above all, please don't "accidentally" beat anyone to death with your flashlight as it seems you've done in the past.

Enough about that, on to the good stuff. Brian Birzer, local photographer extraordinaire and all around swell biker guy, has once again graced the ride with his presence and taken a whole shitload (wow spellcheck you're hipper than I thought) of awesome costumed rider photos, which he's hosting over on his Flickr site. Here are a few highlights, but really all the pictures are awesome and well worth checking out:

Here's a bit of video from near the end of the ride, once we'd met up with the snake bike and the mobile stage. This footage was shot by Kevin, who was correctly identified as "Manny" Calavera (of Grim Fandango) in my previous post.

Finally, here is more snake bike video, shot by persons unknown:

I dumped my footage to my PC over the weekend and will be working on it ASAP. I got a lot of really great shots, it's gonna be a tough one to edit. If anybody has any halloween-themed music suggestions for the soundtrack, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Update: A brand new Critical Mass Austin Flickr group just got created and it's already got 5 members adding photos to it. Go join up if you're of the flickr persuasion so we don't have to hunt your shit down on our own. Here's one of the shots from the group so far, I'd say it's a fair representation of the scope of the ride: