What began as a pair of teens’ Saturday ride on BMX bikes up Hartnell Avenue in Redding turned into a dramatic physical confrontation by multiple Redding Police officers who were staffing a nearby DUI checkpoint.
Later, one of the teens explained they’d approached the Aug. 24 checkpoint with some confusion, and decided that it was strictly for motor vehicles, not bikes. So they rode through the checkpoint, and bypassed the checkpoint’s portable stop sign. As they did, the 18-year-old made some general smart-alecky comments to the officers, while the 17-year-old popped a wheelie and the teens continued their ride. Within seconds, RPD’s flashing lights were behind them, and they were told to stop.
Before long, the 17- and 18-year-old friends would both be handcuffed. One officer would forcefully tackle, straddle and pin the 18-year-old to the ground after the teen had refused to obey the officer’s orders to sit down. A few more officers raced to help the first officer subdue the 18-year-old who screamed loudly for help, as another officer sprayed the flaying teen full force in the face with pepper spray.
Below is the video shared on Tik Tok by Billywane Larkins, a video that’s been shared, time and time again. Every frame contains the text placed there by the video’s creator, “Redding Police department.”
RPD officers quickly arrested the 18-year-old and took him to the Shasta County Jail where he was released a few hours later, around 10 p.m. Without his bike, the 18-year-old walked many hours in the dark to reach his home, his eyes and face painful and grotesquely swollen from the direct pepper spray assault.
Meanwhile, after one officer grabbed the 17-year-old’s cell phone — which abruptly ended the video — the officer tossed the phone to the ground. The 17-year-old was briefly placed in the back of a patrol car, but released. He was given a citation for riding a bike without brakes, and was allowed to leave.
The 17-year-old was given a citation, written by Redding Police officer K. Johnson, No. 154.
When he left, he gathered his friend’s phone and bike where they’d scattered during RPD’s assault of the older teen. Then he transported his friend’s bike by hoisting it high on his bike’s handlebars for the 3-mile ride to return the friend’s belongings.
Mother and son interview
The 17-teen-year old and his mother recently agreed to meet me at a downtown Redding coffee shop to discuss the incident, with the agreement that the teen’s name would be withheld, as he’s a minor.
The 18-year-old declined to be interviewed, and was not present. We know his first name is Leland. We know he is trying to put what happened on Aug. 24 behind him, something the 17-year-old would like to do, too, except he has a mother who will not let go of the RPD-vs-BMX bikers incident.
According to the 17-year-old’s mother, some details were not disputed, such as the fact that the teens were “mouthy” as they contradicted and challenged the first officer.
The video does not show what happened prior to when the officer first confronted the teens about their BMX bikes. According to the 17-year-old, he decided to record the encounter between his friend and the officer because the situation was heating up quickly.
“Have a seat,” directed one RPD officer to the dark-haired 18-year-old who stood his ground, his left hand firmly on his bike, as his right hand held his cell phone that was recording the incident.
“I’m not driving a vehicle,” the 18-year-old shot back. “No! What have I done wrong? What am I doing wrong?”
The 17-year-old leapt into the contentious argumentative fray with an expletive-laced interaction that acknowledged his realization of why they’d been detained. He rightly guessed that the ostensible reason they were detained was because their BMX bikes lacked brakes.
Many BMX riders intentionally remove their bike’s brakes so they can perform better tricks and stunts. Even so, California Vehicle Code Section 21201(a) requires that bicycles should be equipped with brakes that work.
“It’s a BMX bike!” the 18-year-old said. “It’s for tricks!”
The verbal situation turned physical when the officer who’d first approached the teens suddenly grabbed the 18-year-old — who still gripped his bike and phone — spun him around, and finally succeeded in tossing the teen to the ground – barely missing his head hitting a concrete wall in the process — as his bike fell away.
During the entire time the 18-year-old was being manhandled and forced to the ground, his 17-year-old friend repeatedly begged the officers to stop.
“He’s not doing anything,” he yelled. “He never did anything!”
All the while, the 18-year-old yelled, too.
“Help me! I didn’t do anything! Help me!”
At one point the 17-year-old directed his words away from the officers and toward his friend on the ground.
“Don’t resist!”
The 17-year-old’s pitch rose as an officer in a yellow reflective vest suddenly rushed over with an aerosol can and pointed it just inches from the 18-year-old’s face, and let loose with pepper spray, as the first officer kept a tight hold on the teen.
It’s been more than two weeks since the incident, and the 17-year-old’s mother is still shaken. Something that continues to bother her the most was the absence of a phone call from RPD about their interaction with her son and his friend on Aug. 24 outside the DUI checkpoint.
“As soon as they handcuffed him, I should have gotten a call immediately,” Porter said. “I was told they were not read their rights. And they were not told why they were arrested.”
Porter said she is not condoning how the teens spoke to the officers, but she said there’s the important matter of freedom of speech.
“Some people are offended by the language the boys used,” she said. “But bad language is not a crime, and some people are missing the bigger picture that they were harassed by Redding police, they were handcuffed and assaulted, and my son’s friend was maced. People need to remember the big picture includes the right to freedom of speech, and the right to be told why you’re being arrested. When that officer put his hands on my son, he did not say, “You’re under arrest.” Nothing. They just grabbed them. They assaulted my son. He was talking, but he wasn’t moving. He stood in the same spot. What really bothers me is that they didn’t call me. He’s a minor.”
Porter said she knows most parents will defend their kids, and say they’re good kids, even when they’re not. But she said it’s true when it comes to her 17-year-old son.
“He’s got a really hard job, he’s never been in trouble with the law, and he’s really a good kid,” she said.
As an example of the kind of person her son is, Porter described one pivotal time in her son’s life that she made sure he understood the concept of actions and consequences. She said when her son was 13, he and his younger brother took one of her lighters and set brush on fire near a creek near their home that burned less than half an acre. Firefighters extinguished the flames. For Porter, the fire was done, but the lessons were just beginning.
“I raised them to know if you do something wrong, you’re going to have consequences,” she said.
Following the fire, multiple times that summer she took her sons to the fire station that had answered the call, and she instructed her boys to apologize to the men at the station. Then she took them along Bowman Road in Cottonwood several times and followed slowly behind them in her car as they picked up trash along the shoulders of the road. She wrote a three-page letter of apology to the fire chief for her part, that she’d left her lighter where her boys found it, and she hadn’t supervised them as well as she should.
The boys also took a fire prevention course.
Social media comments
It’s been 16 days since RPD officers confronted and roughed up a pair of teenagers as they rode their BMX bikes in the bike lane along Hartnell Avenue in proximity of a DUI checkpoint. Since then, the video of the incident has been shared throughout and beyond the North State. The public reactions range from those who sympathize with the teens, and those who believe the officers involved should be fire, to those who believe the boys were rude, and deserved how they were treated.
Here’s a sample of some of the comments:
“Thank God those kids are off the street .. phew.. And here I was worried about all the homeless by del taco sh**ting in the middle of the road fighting and begging. It’s cool tho we got the real problem”
“the walk up immediate pepper spray is INSANE – did it so casually”
“And this is why I don’t trust the police. Those kids weren’t doing anything. I hope those officers are fired and I hope those kids parents sue the hell out of Redding Police Department. Shame on those officers! If you are a police officer and you are that scared of teenagers riding bikes and standing up for their rights to ride bikes, then maybe you need to rethink your career. Police are suppose to help us feel safe and protected. However, I do not feel safe. I don’t let my kids go outside cause of these crazy ass police officers thinking they can do whatever the fuck they want with no consequences. FIRE THOSE OFFICERS!”
“I agree, the cop are totally in the wrong. But the kids should’ve listened to the cops.”
“He deserved it. These are the same guys that nearly caused wrecks by riding on the wrong side of the street, cutting across traffic, and riding on the sidewalks. If they had been following the rules we all must follow, that likely would not have occurred.”
“They were most likely not following the rules, and they certainly had a mouth on them, but the reaction is out of bounds. Totally.”
“Law enforcement needs better training. They need to learn how to de-escalate these types of encounters instead of making them worse. The kid was not handling this well either, but he is the child and the officer is the adult and should have done a better job handling this situation.”
“While I don’t like the words the kids were saying redding police department should be ashamed of how this was handled.”
“Redding Police Department this really how you be treating the kids out here SMH you got plenty of dope heads to deal with but you’d rather be out here harassing kids for not having brakes on a bmx bike?”
“Don’t seem like kids to me and they do not listen and are combative. Why not just be respectful?”
“All the s*** going on in this town and you got a harass some school kids my f****** god”
“They are not out to protect and serve. They are out to abuse their power”
“Snatching phone illegal af to. Not once was the kid recording asked to back up or told he was being detained.”
Porter, whose son was detained and handcuffed, has left comments, too, on the subject, such as this one:
“Oh know in morning I’m getting an attorney.”
No comment from RPD, police-use-of-force expert provides insight
Over the course of more than a week, A News Cafe reached out to the Redding Police Department several times seeking comment regarding the incident involving the RPD officers and the pair of teen BMX bike riders. To date, RPD has not responded.
In the absence of RPD’s comment and/or input, A News Cafe reached out to a highly respected California Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) recognized police-use-of-force expert. They agreed to offer some insights, as long as their name was not disclosed in this story, as to not jeopardize ongoing North State law enforcement relationships. Click here for the Q&A that features the expert’s observations and opinions after watching the video.
Not only has RPD not responded to A News Cafe’s request for comment, but RPD has not owned up the very existence of the Aug. 24 incident between RPD and the BMX riders.
As is typical with DUI checkpoints, RPD first informs the public of its intention and date of a checkpoint, but not the location. Next, following a DUI checkpoint event, RPD releases a statement that reports the DUI checkpoint outcome, including the number of vehicles detained in the disclosed location, the number of citations and the number of arrests, if any.
But in the case of the Aug. 24 DUI checkpoint on Hartnell Avenue, an event that resulted in two teens being detained and handcuffed, and one of them pepper sprayed and booked in the Shasta County Jail, there was no mention of the teens at all, as if it never happened.
Rather, here is RPD’s press release regarding the Aug. 24 DUI checkpoint, without mention of the BMX teens:
On Saturday, August 24, 2024, the Redding Police Department conducted a DUI / Driver’s License checkpoint from 6:00 pm to 11:00 pm, on Hartnell Avenue at Middleton Drive, in Redding. Officers screened a total of 495 vehicles that passed through the checkpoint. Throughout the checkpoint, officers towed 3 vehicles and cited the respective drivers for driving on suspended licenses, and cited 2 additional drivers for driving while unlicensed. Officers evaluated 4 drivers for driving under the influence. Of those, Marty Thomas, 68 years of Redding, was arrested and booked into the Shasta County Jail for DUI.
The missing information regarding the Aug. 24 the incident involving RPD and the BMX teens begs the question: Does the Redding Police Department disclose all the incidents at the checkpoints, or do they selectively reveal information they wish to report, and conceal incidents they’d rather not publicize?
A new way of looking at law enforcement
Prior to the Aug. 24 sobriety checkpoint incident, Jennifer Porter’s son had a balanced view of those who work in law enforcement.
“I used to look at cops and say, ‘well, there’s some good cops and bad cops, but probably mostly good cops,” he said as he finished the last of his chai latte.
“Now I kind of feel like cops are dicks. I don’t trust them anymore. I learned that night that bikes have to stop at DUI checkpoints, just like cars, which I didn’t know before. And I really didn’t know the law about brakes, which I do know now. So I learned those things, but it’s too bad there wasn’t a better way for us to learn that, because the biggest thing I learned is to not trust cops.”
His mother shook her head.
“That’s just so sad,” she said. “He really is normally a good, respectful kid, and OK, he does cuss. But he was in an unusual situation where he saw his friend getting mistreated by the cops, and then my son got protective and disrespectful. I mean, he saw the officer tackle his friend, and then mace him in the face. I think anyone would feel upset if that happened to them and their friend, or someone they cared about.”
###
