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Skateboarder seeks friendlier Victoria rules after run-ins with bylaw officers

A Victoria man who had his skateboard seized by Victoria bylaw officers for boarding downtown has started an online petition to have the city’s bylaw rewritten. More than 540 people have signed Jake Warren’s online petition calling for the change.
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Jake Warren clings to his skateboard on a Victoria street. He says the cityÍs bylaws are discriminatory.

A Victoria man who had his skateboard seized by Victoria bylaw officers for boarding downtown has started an online petition to have the city’s bylaw rewritten.

More than 540 people have signed Jake Warren’s online petition calling for the change.

Warren, 42, admits he was knowingly breaking the city’s streets and traffic bylaw, which prohibits skateboarding in the downtown red zone — an area of downtown roughly bounded by Wharf Street; Herald and North Park streets; Quadra Street and Blanshard and Belleville streets — when he rolled along a Yates Street sidewalk June 5.

Warren also admits he at first ignored, then swore at and walked away from city bylaw officers who tried to stop him to talk about the offence.

He said he didn’t recognize their brown uniforms and didn’t believe he had to stop for them. Ultimately, he ended up wrestling with one officer, who tried to rip the skateboard out of Warren’s arms as he reached his Blanshard Street apartment.

And he also admits that, on at least one other occasion while skateboarding in Centennial Square, he didn’t stop when a bylaw officer tried to flag him down.

But he maintains the city’s bylaw that allows the confiscation of skateboards is out of date and discriminatory, and should be changed.

“You do not take away rollerblades even though it’s under the same bylaw — or bikes. You don’t take away scooters. You don’t take away any of these other human-powered devices — as they’re referred to in the bylaw — but you’re now going to take away our property. It’s discriminatory.”

Warren is also pushing for changes that would allow skateboards on designated downtown streets — not sidewalks — but on cycling routes.

“The fact of the matter is this bylaw was created in 1991 to solve one problem and that was … the excessive amount of skateboarding that was happening at the corner of View and Douglas streets. There were no skateboard parks in the city and we were kids skateboarding by the hundreds. Police and the business community downtown were frustrated,” Warren said.

Mark Hayden, city manager of bylaw and licensing services, says the bylaw change allowing the confiscation of skateboards may have been initially passed by council in 1991, but, he said, the entire streets and traffic bylaw — including the skateboard-seizure provision — was updated and reviewed by council in 2008.

Hayden said seizure of skateboards is an “enforcement tool” that is rarely used. Bylaw officers have encountered 300 people skateboarding in the downtown in the past year and impounded eight boards, he said.

The episode that led to Warren’s board being seized marked the fourth time officers had tried to confront him about boarding downtown, Hayden said — something Warren maintains is not true.

Hayden said that Warren was unco-operative, to say the least. “My staff have attempted to stop and talk to him on a number of occasions and, essentially, he’s verbally and with body gestures made it very clear he didn’t want to talk to us and wasn’t interested in what we had to talk to him about,” Hayden said.

Warren was issued a $75 ticket for skateboarding downtown. But he says the confiscation provision is overkill and comes with its own financial penalties. It costs $25 to get back a board that’s been confiscated plus a $2-a-day storage fee.

Warren wants to see the red-zone provisions changed to allow boarders on downtown streets similar to regulations in effect in Portland.

“In Portland, Ore., for the last 10 years, you’ve been able to ride as if you are a bicycle. So we would like skate-friendly routes through the City of Victoria, just as though you were [on] a bicycle. Skateboarders should have helmets. We are OK with signalling. We would like it to be a modernized law.”

Meanwhile, Warren has some support among city councillors who are willing to consider changes.

Both councillors Shellie Gudgeon and Chris Coleman said they would be prepared to look at the changes.

“I think we’ve moved on since the bylaw in 1991 and I think there’s an equity issue that needs to be addressed that you can confiscate skateboards but none of the other instruments … in the bylaw,” Coleman said.

Gudgeon said she’s willing to look at the confiscation issue and “if they want to be on the roads, I would certainly reopen the discussion to see how it would work and what it would look like.”

bcleverley@timescolonist.com