Rivieri then gives the boy a stern lecture on the value of respecting his elders, especially when those elders are wearing badges.
The video hit YouTube this week. Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department, said police Commissioner Fred Bealefeld and members of the command staff watched it.
"Officer Rivieri was suspended while IID [the Internal Investigations Division] looks into it," Clifford said. "IID is sorting through all the details."
Clifford said some of those details include exactly when the incident occurred and whether the boy's mother has filed a complaint with IID.
"Obviously it was summertime," Clifford said of when the incident took place. Rivieri is wearing shorts. The boy and some other skateboarders are wearing T-shirts.
"As far as we know, nobody was arrested in that incident," Clifford said. That's got to be a disappointment to those folks who all but cheered when the Mungo boy was arrested as he sat on a dirt bike outside his East Baltimore home. They're probably ready to give Rivieri the Vic Mackey Excellence in Policing Award, too. (Vic Mackey is the brutal, corrupt cop who's the protagonist of the television show The Shield.) I get the feeling that there are more people who feel that way than many of us would like to admit.
There's no question that dirt bikes are illegal in Baltimore. But the way the police handled the boy's arrest sparked an apology from Mayor Sheila Dixon, and then-police Commissioner Leonard Hamm said the arrest was "inconsistent" with his policing strategy. And the boy's family hit the city with a $40 million lawsuit.
Now, to play devil's advocate (but only a little bit) for Rivieri, I have to admit that the principle he was defending is valid: respect for authority, especially police officers. If I were a cop, I wouldn't want some 14-year-old wiseacre calling me "dude" either. And if I caught him skateboarding on the Inner Harbor promenade where he's not supposed to be skateboarding, then I'd expect him to move along without editorializing about it.
Rivieri was on solid ground as long as he admonished the boy from a distance. He crossed the line when he went up to the youth, grabbed him around the neck and took the skateboard.
"That's what's at issue as far as the Police Department is concerned," Clifford said. "Did this officer go about enforcing the law in a way that is appropriate?"
greg.kane@baltsun.com
