Jason Chapman saw something familiar when he watched the YouTube video of a police officer manhandling a skateboarder in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.
"I've had the same thing happen to me, but worse," Chapman, 34, told a group of skateboarders gathered around a computer at Charm City Skatepark, an indoor skating facility he owns in Baltimore's Canton Industrial Area.
Though the officer's intensity angered Chapman and the other skaters, the nature of the conflict - skateboarder vs. authority figure - is one with deep roots in skateboarding culture.
In the 1970s, the antics of the Zephyr Skate Team, a group of California surfers-turned-skaters, cemented the sport's anti-establishment image. In the 1980s, skaters plastered their boards with stickers declaring "Skateboarding is not a crime."
More recently, the conflict has made its way into skateboarding video games. Security guards armed with stun guns chase skaters in the 1999 game Skate and Destroy, and they tackle virtual boarders in Skate, a game released in the fall.
Chapman, who grew up skating on Baltimore streets, said he had several run-ins with aggressive security guards when he was younger. He and his friends dubbed one man "Tackleberry" for his penchant for knocking skaters down. He refers to the officer who was suspended Monday - who complained that the skateboarder had referred to him as "dude" - as "Officer Dude."
Officer Salvatore Rivieri, a 17-year veteran, has been suspended, pending an investigation into the incident in which he loudly berated 14-year-old Eric Bush and took him to the ground in a headlock.
Yesterday, WMAR-TV aired another video shot last summer, of Rivieri at the Inner Harbor kicking a remote-controlled vehicle belonging to an artist from Washington. Sterling Clifford, a city police spokesman, said that "this second video may be evidence to be included" in the inquiry already under way.
As the price of video cameras has dropped, skaters have increasingly documented conflicts with security personnel.
"Kids are tech-savvy," Chapman said. "And as important as going out and learning a new trick is filming a new trick."
Video footage of altercations has proliferated on YouTube and other video-sharing sites. One title, "Angry Catholic Priest vs. Skateboarders," depicts a group of boys with skateboard exchanging curses with a man who repeatedly demands that they "get off the property." Another purports to show police officers attempting to remove skaters who are protesting a skateboarding ban in Philadelphia's Love Park.
