Here we are, 250 years exactly after our Declaration of Independence was signed by our forefathers, and we're still having to deal with petty tyrants trying to spoil our enjoyment of the occasion here in the little lakeside city of Ludington.  

This isn't about some sort of earthshattering decree or request for more tribute from our city leaders, but it's one of those small incidents that illustrate how endemic the problem is in Mason County, where a young boy riding his bicycle safely and lawfully in the Fourth Ward is traumatized when one of our county deputies decided to make himself feel like someone important. 

Incidents like these seem to happen way too often for both of the police agencies in Mason County and it seems that there are three main deficiencies in those departments:  1) lack of training, especially in deescalation, and/or 2) inability to follow the training they have, and/or 3) lack of knowledge of the actual laws they enforce.  Let's review what happened today on a Washington Avenue sidewalk, where a 14-year-old boy was driving his fat-tired bicycle north between Dowland and Melendy Streets around 5 PM, well after the Freedom Festival parade and crowds had dissipated.

A county deputy was driving southward on Washington when he saw this young man riding on the sidewalk, that bike looking like the one above, one of those bicycles which have no motors but have tires more appropriate for a pocket rocket.  For whatever reason, the deputy decided to make a traffic stop on the young teenager, explicitly telling the boy that he was not able to ride on the sidewalk.  

The boy was smart enough to know that he was in the right and said so to the deputy.  And rather than show the state law or local ordinance that backed up the deputy's statement, the deputy decided that the child's questioning of his authority was disrespectful.  The deputy had the youngster get off his bike and sit in the back of the patrol car, illegally detaining the youth while shaming him in front of other people in the area, and leaving him in shock for the severe abuse of his civil rights on such a day as the country's 250th birthday.  Here's what laws applied here:

Those familiar with the Ludington City Code know that there are some sidewalks that are off-limits to bicycles in town, these are quite limited, however, and all other sidewalks in the right-of-way allow for bicycles, these are all in the downtown area:

No traffic control orders exist in the area where this boy was that would be prohibiting bikes on the sidewalk, ergo the deputy making a traffic stop was unfounded, the traumatizing detention for doing nothing at all wrong was illegal.  

Unless the deputy had some sort of fetish for putting young boys in the back of his cruiser, the incident shows that he was ignorant of the laws pertaining to such a stop, that his skills at deescalating a situation was wanting, and that his training was either poor or ignored.  The deputy deserves retraining and discipline for inflicting such an emotional scar on one of our area's children.  Unfortunately, this very rarely happens when they make such mistakes, and in those rare cases it's almost always because the child affected has an important parent or two, which this one did not.