Unless these two people owned the table in question, then they were removing private property from a business. That's called stealing. And that is indeed a crime.

Just a thought!

It's the business' decission to arrest someone for theft, regardless of what the police do or don't want to do about it.

I didn't know there were charges. I thought there were just handcuffs and a stern lecture about the role of private property in our society. Am I wrong?

Fuck this bullshit chain store with carbon copy decor. It has all the charm and local appeal of a Milpitas strip mall.

that there were no charges. However one man was detained in handcuffs and illegally searched when he questioned why his ID was being demanded. The main issue is that the police are edgy bastards with poor communication skills and no respect. Does anybody know if that cage in front (and behind for that matter) of the aforementioned coffee shop is really private property? I suppose its irregardless, if the ugly oozing corporate blob asks, then so the police will do.

They were detained and never charged.

Why didn't you hold a rally when that woman was arrested at the Farmer's Market last month?

Let me remind readers that BadAss Coffee opposed raising the minimum wage law here in Santa Cruz as they want to pay their workers less than a living wage. AND they want all their fellow businessmen to also pay less than a living wage to their workers.

Okay, you got me. I thought you were serious, but that last post convinced me that this is a joke.

However, it's enlightening how close you are to the real sense of entitlement with some local activists!

I'm pretty sure Becky is not joking.

Does anyone have a list of businesses in downtown Santa Cruz that do pay more than minimum wage, or the proposed minimum wage, to their employees? It could be helpful.

Also, I do think that Book Shop Santa Cruz offers benefits to their employees, part time as well as full time. Something those other businesses do not. I know that this has to cost them something. Any idea on how much that extra contribution is that supplies health benefits, etc, to the gross pay? Since it is not out of pocket for the employee it kind of raises their base salary.

My comment was not directed at Becky, but at the fact that this whole issue is a joke. And for someone to post a few photos of the franchise, along with docs seeming to state that they donate to GIs in Iraq, I'm not sure what they are going for. Is that person trying to say that this isn't a local coffee shop? Duh. And Borders isn't a local book store. Next?

So they send coffee to troops serving in Iraq. Is there some sort of judgment statement attached to that? Is it bad to provide free coffee to troops? Are you trying to insinuate that this is a war-supporting, corporate-loving, anti-freedom shop? Trust me- I love good coffee, and I don't think that Bad Ass Coffee is very good, but I wouldn't hold a grudge against them because they send freebies to men and women deployed. What's your point?

This whole thing is a joke. That's the bottom line. Unless someone wants to post pictures or facts about the "Badass 2" then I'm inclined to think it's a prank. If you don't think it is, prove it.

I don't know what is a joke and what is not, but I have a little information. I was downtown at lunchtime Monday and saw police arresting a young man near Borders. I thought he was a shoplifter. But when I got closer, I saw that several policemen were detaining two high school students over the "theft" of a small metal table. Apparently they had moved a table acros the street to have a "picnic" on the sunny side of the street.

One of the young men was very angry and I thought he was going to get in more trouble. The other one in handcuffs kept asking if it was illegal to move sidewalk furniture and whose table was it anyway?

I didn't stay aroud to see what happened to the boys. I looked in the Sentinel Cops and Courts on Tuesday to see what happened, but there was no report. The only thing I found about it was here on indybay.org

Sorry not much to go on. I was not able to go to the rally for them. Was it for real?

I have to assume, that this is propaganda or a joke. You back up nothing you say, posted anonymously and thats not the way protests normally start. The benches in the back of Bad Ass, who is one of the few who came out publicly against the sleeping ban, and in my experience have been very kind to the homeless and poor do belong to Bad Ass. I not saying this Corporation is great. But jeez, I think we have bigger and better things and ways to oppose the removal of benches and public space downtown. It is is a real issue that is justified in protesting. but until someone or some org with enough balls to post their actual name and post a cohesive reason and plan , i doubt you will see any protesters. The talk about wages could apply to many business that have been downtown for much longer. Did anyone ask the owner how she feels about the removal of public benches? Is the wage info correct? She is easy to speak to. Nicely answers questions. Its not rocket science to back up what your saying with some proof. Who was arrested? When? Case number? Cops? Pictures besides the crap below. This arrest should be on the Police web site. Distraction tactics work as this post proves.

if your looking for an arrest, don't rely on the local rag. They print little of what the Police web site Media Report has, which is posted daily for newspapers to print the Cops and Courts. It has all arrests accept minor citations. The Senile picks and chooses what it wants to print , which is very little of what is in the daily reports.

Tim, I hate to be the one who breaks it to you, but this post is a joke. "Cops and Courts" aside, these foolios are not real. And if they are, they deserve jail time for their idiocy alone.

The overreaction of the police and Bad Ass management to the "table borrowing" (not theft) is not a joke. It is standard operating procedure downtown. Merchants are trained to call cops at the least provocation, be prepared to go to court, and carry cases forward (for such crimes as demanding the right to sit on non-obstructively on the sidewalk in the Forbidden Zones, playing music in the "wrong" places, hackeysacking in the public corridors behind the businesses (hence less likely to interfere with traffic), congregating in front of Borders or New Leaf Market, etc.

Police then come down, often in absurd numbers to surveille, harass, and (frequently) arrest. The idea of these terrorist tactics may be to enforce obedience by fear.

The Bad Ass management is to be commended for opposing the Parking Lot Panic Law. I criticize them for the failure to do the obvious--walk across the street and say"this isn't public furniture, it's ours; please return it." Hopefully they'll learn from this incident to behave differently.

Meanwhile benches disappear and more public space is made private without any public input or hearings as the Coonerty-Mathews-Robinson secret Downtown Task Force rolls on.

Trolls on indybay who support increased police state mentality downtown, however, are doing their usual sneering, smearing, and snickering. Old story.

The real issues remain.

I believe the "Old Story" is yours, Robert. Nice to see that you're still calling anyone that opposes your way of thinking as a troll and SCPD lover.

Craig,
I think I said clearly in my first comment. I thought this post to be a joke, or simply poorly put together, with little to no evidence presented. I am not saying it did not happen. i think there are better ways to fight the abuse of taking public benches etc. This is real issue, despite whoever wrote it. And I don't know who that is, I think they should have given more info to get me or most to be interested in this particular incident. The gentrification of SC has gone on my entire life. Its an issue that is important. But I know better than to take benches from a biz a put them on the other side of the street. To make a real statement, they should have brought there own. I would have respected that.
Tim Rumford

overthrow,
Robert is a friend of mine, as you can see, we don't really agree on this post. But, he let me speak my peace. I have never known Robert to write a post or anything without his name on it. I use my name, that holds allot more water than people so scared of their own opinions they cant even comment using theres. "Trolls" is an internet term; look it up. Just because its also been used in our city for different uses, online it means one thing. Wikipedia will give you the definition or any internet dictionary that includes words that are now used the world over, such as "trolls" on the internet. You find them on every open forum.

Trolls post anonymously , usualley on political discussions to interrupt real discussions. Sometimes sent by the opposition and even paid, and sometimes they are just people with far too much time on there hands who NEVER use a name.
Tim Rumford

Tim et al, I can assure you that yes, the badass2 are real. Even if some of the flap about it is inflated. Robert, in fact, interviewed one of them on his show.

And while I think people were having some fun about this, the theater doesn't obscure the fact that this is an example of the police state that downtown has become. So there are real issues here, that relate directly to issues near and dear to your heart.

This is an illustration of the basic downtown conflicts between shopping and relaxing on a sunny day, between public space and privatized space, between public benches and private sidewalk furniture, between law enforcement and anyone seen as other or different.

Not to overplay this too much more, but the Badass2 represent a microcosm of the basic conflicts we are seeing in our society. It represents an unfortunate trajectory of a trend toward privatizing the commons and using law enforcement to enforce that shift of ownership.