In yet another case that requires pointing out that it is not an Onion article, police in Boulder Colorado claimed that stacking rocks in an artistic design constituted “destruction of public property” and threatened an artist with jail if he continued maliciously balancing rocks on top of each other, without regard for the imaginary law.
It’s not really clear if this ridiculousness stemmed from just a fairly common lack of understanding of laws by the police or the seemingly as common confusion about what the terms “public property” and “destruction” actually mean. But, to be fair, this could also just be predicated on their even more common tendency to disregard all those things in an effort to bully someone, seemingly for no good reason at all.
According to Alternet.org:
In a Monday Facebook post, (Michael) Grab explained that a Boulder police officer had informed him that there would be stiff penalties for continuing his art.
“For the past 7 years i (sic) have been creating this art in and around Boulder, Colorado, USA. nearly every day!” he wrote. “[J]ust this weekend, one police officer has decided that balancing rocks in Boulder, Colorado is now illegal, obscurely referencing two city codes [5-4-8 and 5-4-2] about ‘destruction of public property’ in relation to rocks.”
“So now the police have belligerently taken it upon themselves to write tickets and/or arrest ANYONE balancing rocks in Boulder, CO. and specifically threatened to ticket me and/or arrest me if they catch me in the future,” the artist lamented. “[I] encourage as many people as possible (especially locals) to contact the city council here in Boulder and voice your support for this long standing tradition in Boulder. [I]t is something that an overwhelming portion of the community supports.”
The artist, who goes by the name “Gravity Glue,” was fortunately saved from a life sentence (probably) of hard time and irony breaking rocks in the heat, after people followed his request for a call flood (as we like to call them) and someone in the local government made a phone call to the police department that more than likely involved the words, “Are you fucking kidding me with this?” being uttered at some point.
More than likely, that actually saved the Boulder police a bunch of embarrassment, more than anything else. The law that was cited by the unnamed cop with way too much time on his hands clearly doesn’t apply in the first place. Also, Gravity Glue has become somewhat of a YouTube celebrity after videos of his work have been posted there recently and people realized that it looks kinda cool and pretty impossible to do.
Plus, Rooster Magazine had already begun pointing out that perhaps the Boulder Police Department could better spend their time preventing actual crimes, such as the above average levels of robberies and rapes being committed in their town. There was a whole lot of stupidity and bad publicity just waiting to spring into action with just that one really dumb act.
So, for now, the horrible rock stacking crime spree will continue unabated. In an ideal world the cops in Boulder, Colorado (which by the way seems like the obvious place to stack rocks), would move on to fighting some of those real crimes, rather than harassing eccentric artists that nobody really appears to be bothered by. However, this is not yet that ideal world. Since cops generally have neither the legal duty, nor the inclination to actually do that, they’ve probably already huddled into a big circle to figure out what harmless person they should protect and serve harass next.
Kelly is a lifelong resident of Las Vegas, who’s been very active in local grassroots activism, as well as on a national level during his extensive travels. He’s also the founder/main contributor of Nevada Cop Block, served as editor/contributor at CopBlock.org and designed the Official Cop Block Press Passes.
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Death penalty.
F I R S T ! ! ! W O W ! ! ! J U S T WOW ! ! !
Let him get some rocks and build his little statues at home.
Swear on my life I’ll buy your plane ticket to North Korea as soon as you’re ready, bro.
He’d like the greyness and the regimentation of North Korea. He’d likely like that boot stomping on his face even more. He so wants it here.
If you look closely at the picture you’ll see the cairns of piled stones (Fantail Falls, Haast Pass, South Island, NZ). This is from years of native and foreign lawbreakers that should have just built them at home. Really?
The guy was making stone sculptures in riverbeds. JC has no soul. Buy the ticket for his trip to paradise.
Edit: BTW, go here https://www.google.com/maps/views/view/117565688403001302622/gphoto/6026040967741152210?gl=nl&heading=85&pitch=88&fovy=75 and you’ll see how many cairns. The number is incredible. So many lawbreakers, so little time.
Let him??? How about letting him be free to do as he pleases. Candid idea huh?
That way he doesn’t have to worry about idiots like you misusing laws to intimidate him!
Going to be funny when somebody stacks your body parts up in some gravity defying position.
Or let him build his little statues out of the rocks that already belong to him on the public land that also belongs to him.
Another douchebag with a badge whose mouth was overloading his ass. His face should be made public with dumbass written across his forehead.
… and demand to see the evidence of what was destroyed…. LOL… stupid fucking pigs…. More proof their purpose is to find any way they can to violate your constitutional rights and kidnap you and hold you for ransom….
Cops caught doing nonsense like this should be disciplined by the PD, or the PD’s budget cut 10% because they clearly have more time on their hands than crime to deal with. Seriously, in a time of greater criticism of LE, and idiots like this have to make it easy to criticize cops.
Shawn:
So….destruction of public priests doesn’t matter to you?
Well….what if they started spray painting those rocks? Does that change it for you?
Is it silly. Yeah….sort of. But so are the actions of the artist. Where do you draw the line?
Still waiting for you to try my experiment abut public property.
Jump in your car tonight and drive to the city park while the kids are playing baseball. Then drive right out on the field and do donuts. It’s public property right? It’s no different than stackin rocks in a river right?
And then…drive straight down to the courthouse and kick in the door. After all…it’s a public building right? And who are they to lock you out of your public buildings right?
Just please make sure you live stream it here so we can watch.
Prove that there even is such a thing as property using actual facts (not merely citing scriptural dogmas). Property is a mystical projection of the mind and a scriptural article of faith. Aside from referring to a sacred written dogma which we must take on faith, what facts prove the conclusion that anyone owns anything?
You touch my shit and you die. Proof enough?
10 percent? Cut the budget by 100 per cent.
And this is why the only good pig is a dead pig. Artist should have smashed in his head and thrown him in the water.
Boulder police today acknowledged that an officer mistakenly issued a warning last weekend to a local artist who stacks rocks in Boulder Creek, but stressed that such actions are not illegal in the city.