D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March
2009
Hell on Wheels
Turning skateboard safety into a confrontational crisis, and teens into "troublemakers."
We're sure that the Silver City Town Council acted out of a sincere concern for the safety of local youth in last month's skate-park brouhaha. But the result, which many skateboarders perceived instead as bullying by adults who equate youth with lawlessness, was less like a safety lesson and more like a James Dean movie. Or maybe The Blob, in which young rebel Steve McQueen is hounded by local officials.
Somehow, the impetus to protect young skateboarders' skulls by persuading them to wear helmets spun out of control. The council briefly closed the skate park — as much as it's possible to "close" a park. Two teenagers scuffled with police, one getting arrested at the park and the other fleeing. Several other boys got arrested for criminal trespassing while the park was locked up.
At least local youth got a little civics lesson. Many teens were among the roughly 200 people who packed an "emergency" town council meeting for two hours of sometimes-heated and -profane debate.
We can only hope that the "understanding" reached between the Silver City police and skateboarders in a subsequent, calmer meeting holds. From reports of that meeting, Police Chief Ed Reynolds managed to communicate with the young people without demonizing them, urging skateboarders to talk with police: "We are not untouchable. Come up and talk to us anytime. . . . The respect goes both ways."
With apologies to Aretha Franklin, "respect" might have been a better basis for the town council's efforts, rather than a rapid escalation to a show of force. Granted, closing the skate park — which only opened in November — got kids' attention. But it also turned local youths whose only desire was to have fun into criminals, and bred distrust of town authorities and law enforcement.
Most skateboarders were never the "bad seeds" that some seemed to view them as. But who knows what bad seeds of mistrust may have been planted by this needless confrontation?
We say "needless" because town officials seemed to be asking the wrong questions relating to the skate park. If their goal was to encourage skateboarders to wear helmets, an educational approach rather than an authoritarian one might have been more effective. After all, if the skate park remained closed, local youth wouldn't stop skateboarding — they'd simply return to the streets and sidewalks, still not wearing helmets. Keeping the skate park open, with free helmets available and an emphasis on safety promotion, represents the most likely route to increasing helmet compliance.
Wearing a helmet while skateboarding is, after all, the law — the Child Helmet Safety Act, which went into effect in July 2007. That law sought to address the very real problem of head injuries to young people on wheels. And — let's be clear — anyone not wearing a helmet in such circumstances is not only breaking the law, but just plain stupid.
But turning helmet-less skateboarders into criminals was never the intent of the law. In fact, its primary focus was to encourage youngsters to wear helmets while bicycling. According to John McPhee, New Mexico Safe Kids Coalition Coordinator, "Among all recreational sports, bicycling injuries are the leading cause of emergency room visits for children and adolescents, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. In 2004, the number of bicycle crash head injuries resulting in hospitalization was more than eight times higher than those caused by either baseball or football." For consistency, other wheeled activities such as skateboarding were also included in the helmet mandate — even tricycles.
(A 1998 study actually found that skateboarding is a "comparatively safe sport," responsible for only half as many emergency-room admissions as basketball, though at that time injuries were on the rise: "The most common injuries are musculoskeletal" — particularly to the ankle and wrist. "More serious injuries resulting in hospitalization typically involve a crash with a motor vehicle" — a risk skate parks are designed to minimize. Other research shows that one-third of all skateboarding injuries occur in a beginning skater's first few weeks on wheels, and that only five percent of all skateboarding injuries occur in skate parks.)
You don't see phalanxes of police pursuing helmet-less kids on bikes or trikes, however. No scuffles have been reported with lawbreaking toddlers, caught tricycling without head protection. (Nor, as Mayor James Marshall pointed out, has the town contemplated shutting down its streets because of lack of full compliance with seat-belt laws.) Ironically for a town that just spent $700,000 (mostly funds appropriated by the legislature, on donated land) to build a state-of-the-art skate park, skateboarders have been singled out for enforcement and punishment.
But that was never the intent of the law, according to McPhee: "The Child Helmet Safety Act is very similar to existing state laws in that it does not require helmet use by adults, nor is there any intention to emphasize enforcement or punishment. . . . New Mexico will have a maximum of a civil fine (no record) of $10 that can be waived with proof of purchase of a helmet, and a municipal option of 'verbal warnings only.' The intent of the bill is to protect and educate children and their parents, not punish them. Primary enforcement is intended to be implemented by parents, teachers and recreational supervisors, not law enforcement. We have included the option of 'verbal warnings only' as a permanent option for municipalities, as we want to emphasize that this bill is primarily educational, with primary enforcement coming from parents, educators, mentors and recreational supervisors."
Somehow that doesn't even sound like the same law that the Silver City town council is all hepped up about.
Besides asking, "How can we encourage helmet safety?," the other question local officials should have been asking is, "Is the town covered in terms of liability?" Amazingly, the issue of civic liability in case of an accident at the skate park was all but invisible in last month's controversy.
Indeed, according to local educator Jesse Franklin-Owens, who was involved in planning the skate park, the impetus for the helmet push did not come from the town's insurance carrier. By posting "skate at your own risk," along with other rules and physical details, the town is in compliance with the insurance company's requirements. In a worst-case scenario of a successful lawsuit, the town's insurance deductible is $5,000 — hardly a sum worth closing a $700,000 park over.
In any case, the likelihood of such a suit seems remote. According to Mattie Eagle, the former head of GIFTTT, which originally developed the skate park, liability issues were thoroughly researched in the planning process. There has never been a successful lawsuit against a skate park in New Mexico, and Eagle knows of no such judgment against any public skate park in the whole country.
What, then, explains the urgency of some on the council to crack down on and close a skate park that's been open only a few months? At one meeting, comments were made about the "permissiveness" of today's society, and about too much concern over kids' "self-esteem." If skateboarders are being made the targets of an object lesson in "family values" or who's really running this town, that's unfortunate.