TheAgitator.com
Boulder Cops Smash Naked Pumpkin Run
Monday, November 2nd, 2009For ten years, Boulder residents have staged a spontaneous “naked pumpkin run” on Halloween, in which dozens of runners (150 last year) don only shoes and a pumpkin on their head, then jog a four-block route through the city.
This year, however, Boulder police put an end to the revelry, stationing 40 cops and two SWAT teams along the route, which police chief Mark Beckner promising that anyone showing their, er, treats would land on the state’s sex offender list.
Looks like it worked. Just a few people did the run this year, and with sufficient clothing to ward off an arrest.
(Thanks to Sean McMahon for the tip.)
Seriously, is there no crime there to take care of? Nothing to investigate?
Yes! Since the threat of a bogus sex offender charge was put before the public, the chief has brought much more attention to the issue of inappropriate use of sex offender laws to the general public.
By being a jerk, he’s actually helped in a manner that would be otherwise very diificult to accomplish. Thanks Mark Beckner! Your misuse of the law has enlightened many more than I could have!
i’m glad he did this. i’ve been frightened to death of meeting unclothed people with pumpkins on their head since i was a kid. i can rest easy now. /sarc
pegr, I really hope your read on this proves correct. It would be wonderful to see people finally rise up and decide they aren’t going to be subject these ridiculous laws and their flagrant over- use anymore. Unfortunately, I think most people will just mindlessly accept that this is the ways things are going to be from now on because THE LAW is THE LAW.
In Soviet Russia you could run naked.
Be fair, guys! Chief Beckner clearly doesn’t want Boulder to turn into the hellhole that is Somerville, MA (home of the Tufts University annual Naked Quad Run), Ann Arbor MI (home of the University of Michigan annual Naked Mile) and other cesspools of depraved scum.
Remember: nudity hurts everyone.
@pegr: I was kinda thinking the same thing. I hope that’s the way it turns out. I know the usual people that cheerlead any police action won’t see it that way, but I hope regular people do.
@Boyd Durkin: You probably could, but honestly: Is any man going to run naked in negative temperatures? Hey, maybe that’s why they hid their identity with pumpkins!
Seems only fitting that someone should have their lives totally destroyed for being naked in public. One only has to consider the irreparable harm that seeing someone naked does to another human being. What do we hire cops for if not to protect us from mass sexual assaults. I mean, you can hardly arrest a single person for exposing himself to a child and then permit 150 to do it with impunity.
If you have any doubt about the damage such blatant displays of nudity cause, you only need to ask psychiatric hospitals about how they are deluged with admissions after Spencer Tunick visits a city. Or visit Europe where they treat nudity as if it weren’t even a crime. And let’s not forget the shattered lives of those who have vacationed at nudist resorts.
Just because the government can destroy someone’s life for merely being naked in public, doesn’t mean we’re not still the “land of free”. There are other things we’re still allowed to do, so let’s be positive and rejoice in that.
So the Sex Offender Registry has become
the ultimate scare tactic. Now the police don’t even pretend
it’s a list of dangerous offenders. It’s just the stigma.
Amazing.
I love how the prosecutor says that he thinks the police are being heavy-handed and out of line and then in turn says, he’ll prosecute any cases they bring him.
Strange, I thought he was the DA and got to to decide which cases actually see a courtroom and which don’t. I also thought that when he found a case he thought wasn’t appropriate, it was his duty to throw it out.
So I don’t have to worry about seeing a bunch of Pumpkin headed, naked fools running around? Cool. I mean, there’s horror, and then Horror.
Swat teams. Because you never know what kinds of weapons those naked people may be carrying…
I wonder if Beckner purchased or hand made his giant douche-bag costume.
Boulder’s one of the only cities where people are in good enough shape that the *shouldn’t* be arrested en masse for public nudity.
So the police placed extra bodies in the 4 block area where the run normally takes place. This may be a silly question, but why didn’t people just run somewhere else?
Threatening people with being put on the sex offender registry and having the SWAT teams present was ridiculous (although hopefully it’s because they had nothing better to do with the SWAT teams), but I can’t really bash a police chief for trying to enforce the law.
Due to the weather in Boulder over the weekend, the police were simply protecting people from hazards that overly erect nipples and mass shrinkage from the cold and snow cause.
How spontaneous can something be that’s done on the same day for ten years running?
Given the typically chilly weather there, I would not participate due to shrinkage concerns alone. But gee effing whiz, two SWAT teams were deployed? Did the idiot police chief expect to find concealed weapons? What a buffoon.
From the WSJ piece:
This is nothing but naked paramilitary authoritah run amok, in the sole hands of nutjob thugs who ignore their intellectual superiors and don’t give a flying fuck about efficiency in spending money stolen from the people they allegedly “protect and serve.”
I’m surprised that no one was tazed.
What’s next? Can our apprehension and punishment industry do anything else to demonstrate how irrelevant and out-of-touch they are with community standards and the concept of a “free” country?
Perhaps they should arrest anyone who has a mirror in their bathroom; at my age, seeing myself naked is “likely to cause affront or alarm.” When will they try to arrest me for that???
Why can’t these pumpkin headed drama queens just eat mushrooms and really get weird
I find it impossible to fathom that most people don’t see anything wrong with criminalizing nudity. In fact, they are shocked by the suggestion that it not be illegal. We are becoming a country where, by default, everything is illegal unless it has a political lobby.
That Americans see nothing wrong with outlawing nudity is proof that they are incapable of being effective guardians of liberty. What ever liberty we have is in spite of them, not because of them.
When the police start deciding which freedoms we get to enjoy based not on the law but the threats they can get away with, isn’t is time to get rid of those particular police?
Somebody should sent a copy of this whole to Mark Breckner, police chief of Boulder. Maybe it would help him to hear another POV.
Just out of curiosity, I wonder if it’s illegal to don flesh colored tight pants with dangling, fake genitalia.
BruceH,
You can be arrested for ANYTHING. Once arrested, you must spend huge amounts of money and time to avoid confiction.
Legal or illegal means NOTHING.
Try to list the last time a cop stood looking at someone thinking “Gee, I sure wish I could arrest that asshole but there’s nothing I can charge him with!” Only happens in movies.
#27 Boyd Durkin, no truer words were ever spoken. And now I’m even more depressed than normal.
Yizmo Gizmo – I agree w your sentiment. Threatening a coveted spot on the sex offender list has gestapo tactic written all over it. However, do we really need to cheer on public nudity even if it is purportedly “all in fun?” I mean, WTF – is sodom and gomorrah next with some of you people?
I don’t think anybody who knows me would call me a prude but I’m not the least bit interested in seeing some middle aged naked character, male or female, jogging down the street making a fool out of themselves. {Now if we were guaranteed the Dallas Cheerleaders – horse of a different color. ;-) But we aren’t, we’re talking mostly guy & gal next door quality and that ain’t likely to be pretty. I say – arrest them if the do it. Charge them with creating a public nuisance or something on that order, then fine them $200.00 or thereabouts and move on.
The Boulder PD’s 2008 annual report is online. Clearance rates for serious crimes are on page 2:
Robbery: 32 percent
Burglary: 11 percent
Vehicle Theft: 12 percent
Arson: 14 percent
http://www.bouldercolorado.gov/files/Police/annual_report_2008for_web...
But they had forty patrol cops and two SWAT teams for the pumpkin run.
Boyd Durkin
“BruceH,
You can be arrested for ANYTHING. Once arrested, you must spend huge amounts of money and time to avoid confiction.
Legal or illegal means NOTHING.”
Sick but true. We are all guilty until proven innocent now.
What else aren’t you interested in seeing? Perhaps we could charge them $200, too. We could call it the “unsightly persons tax”. The pretty elites (and presumably cops and politicians) would, of course, be exempt.
I mean, if Americans have any rights at all, we should certainly have the right to not be assaulted in public by sights we don’t like.
#32 | Dave Krueger |
Dave, I think I pretty much covered it above.
But in case you missed it I’ll run it by you again. I’m not interested in seeing you or anybody else out in public exposing yourselves. The cheerleader comment was for levity – note the winkie face. There are a whole bunch of laws I disagree with. Public nudity just doesn’t happen to be one of them. Obviously you’re free to disagree.
I have to wonder if Police Cheif is an elected position. If so, I would recommend that Boulderites excercise their franchise. Heck, if I lived in Boulder I would seriously consider working to bring a public resolution specifically authorizing the annual naked pumpkin run for a vote.
I am not an attorney, but I suspect that you could put language into such an enactment that would preclude such a display from being defined as indecent exposure.
For that matter, going a bit further out on a limb, I suspect that you could even make obstruction of the event a criminal offense….
Oddly, I do agree with the mayor on that one. I disagree with a whole lot of people from Boulder on a wide array of topics. I don’t even like going there very often, but I do like the fact that the place has a deserved reputation as being a bit wacky.
It’s been a nice counterpoint to the “just shoot ‘em” attitude of Denver cops.
I guess the cops just got tired of seeing men with actual visible sized penises. You know, jealousy, penis envy, etc.
This police chief needs to grow a set and realize that this is all in fun. If police start interpreting the law to harm someone who is obivously not causing damage, the police should be charged.
Can we say 1984? Or Brave New World, sure I knew you could!
(May you rest in peace Mr.Rogers!)
I would have liked to see 100,000 people show up…and all of them insist on being arrested. And every single one insist on a trial by jury. They could have done the most good towards exposing the joke that is the Sex Offender Registry ever.
Would have been awesome to pull up the registry website and the entire city of Boulder be under one giant red dot.
It’s real simple: elect a *new* phucking mayor, people!
One of the things that I find satisfying about the naked pumpkin run is the fact that it isn’t an “attractive people only” club. Sure, there are people that I would prefer not to see in the nude.
On the other hand I would rather have the event open to all comers than to have it regulated by any subjective standards.
People are people.
If you really want to know why there are so many people behind bars in the U.S., you don’t really have to go down to city hall. You need look no further than your neighbors, associates, and friends. At worst they want everyone locked up who isn’t like them. And, at best, they don’t care who gets locked up as long as it’s not them.
the key point here is not whether the law should be upheld or whether it’s generally ok for folks to run naked down main street. the point is that the government is freely and without opposition using terror tactics against anyone who might disagree with their point of view.
participating in the naked pumpkin run does not in any way make you a “sex offender.” however, being declared a sex offender by the state will in itself utter ruin your life. our government is now reduced to using abject terror as a means of combating even the most minor unapproved expression that disagrees with the official government view. this is not america. in fact, it’s not even something that could have happened in the soviet union or nazi germany. By supporting this sort of terrorism, or even by accepting it, you are turning this country into one of the worst places in the world in terms of human dignity and freedom.
suppose your bill from your electric utility is $60 for the month, but you only have $50 to send them. so they send some guys over who break your arms and legs and explain how you better not be short again. anyone here would support that?
quit kidding yourself: your government is at war with you. to sit around like stupid sheep and support it until this terror comes to your door is a sad testament.
normally i would have been in full agreement with chris from alabama, but given the complacency of the american public today the government might just convict them all as sex offenders in a mass trial and send them all away for a long time. i doubt that few today in this country are not so brainwashed and pacified to even say a word if this happened.