Critical
Mass Tensions With Cops Grow After Arrest, Hit-and-Run
Critical Mass Miami has blown
up over the past year. The last-Friday-of-the-month rides now regularly draw
more than 2,000 cyclists at a time, and even celebs such as LeBron James,
Dwyane Wade, and Gabrielle Union have shown up.
But there are signs the
movement is experiencing growing pains, not least of all growing tension with
cops. During the June 28 ride, Miami
Police officers were booed and pelted with trash after arresting local chef Aleric
"AJ" Constantin for selling ice cream out of a cart on his bicycle.
"I basically spent a day and a half in jail for selling ice cream,"
Constantin says. "Pretty much from the get-go, the officers seemed really
focused on breaking up the whole mass."
Elsewhere on the ride, a father
and son say police were less than helpful when a Mount Sinai Hospital surgeon
hit the pair with his Mercedes and then drove off.
Critical Mass rides, which are
staged in hundreds of cities worldwide to celebrate bike culture, began in
Miami in 2006 and have grown exponentially in the past two years. Last month,
thousands met in downtown Miami to ride to Miami Beach and back.
Midway through that route, as
the peloton crossed the 79th Street Causeway, a black Mercedes-Benz SL550 belonging
to Dr. Irvin Willis began weaving through the crowd and hit 22-year-old Anthony
Manzano.
"He tapped him out of his
way, knocked him off his bike," says Anthony's father, Ulises Manzano.
When Ulises chased down and tried to stop Willis' car, the doctor allegedly
knocked him over too before running over his bicycle and driving off.
"If my dad hadn't jumped
off the bike, he would have run over him," says the younger Manzano, who
ended up with an injured wrist and bruised hip.
Worse than the crime, MPD
waited days to begin investigating the hit-and-run, the Manzanos say. (A police
spokesman declined to comment on the case because it's open; Willis has not
been charged with a crime, though a police report notes he was driving in a
"careless or negligent manner" and "fled the scene."
Willis' attorney, Michael A. Haber, says the doctor "is not prepared to
discuss the matter at the moment.")
"What if the guy could
have hurt other people that night?" says Barbara Manzano, Ulises' wife.
The
absurdity of the incident was made all the worse when, a few hours later, Miami
cops did make one arrest: Constantin was handcuffed and sent to jail for
slinging homemade dessert.
Constantin, who is a chef at Michael's
Genuine Food & Drink, has made a name for himself by handing out free
samples of his outrageous flavors, such as orange mango saffron ice cream with
mint-infused whipped cream, from a homemade bike outfitted with a cooler.
At the end of Friday's ride,
Constantin and friend Hunter Hoover were in front of the Filling Station bar
downtown around 10 p.m. when an MPD officer approached as Constantin was
selling ice cream to a fellow cyclist. The cop asked the chef if he had a
license to sell his dessert. Constantin handed over his ID and said all of his
paperwork was in order. Moreover, he had permission from the Filling Station to
be there.
When Constantin asked for his
ID back, though, the cop told him he could have it as soon as he was packed and
ready to leave. When he objected, Constantin says, he was arrested. (A police
report states he had been warned in the past not to sell ice cream and that he
resisted arrest; he disputes both points.)
Boos and trash began raining
down from all directions as cops cuffed the chef. "Everybody was booing
and throwing plates and items and things I don't remember at the cops,"
Hoover says. "It was crazy. It was out of control. The entire Critical
Mass was up in arms."
The besieged officers called
for backup, and a half-dozen squad cars soon pulled up. Amazingly, it appears
as if no one else was arrested.
Both Constantin and Hoover say
the incident is really about more than one man's bogus arrest. It's about how
Critical Mass has grown so large that cops can't ignore it anymore. Hoover
admits the movement has ballooned so fast that it's gotten unruly at times. But
he says he and other bikers are working to fix those problems.
"As soon as we entered
Miami Beach territory, Beach cops... came out and immediately started to assist
us by blocking off the streets," he says. "But as soon as we got into
the City of Miami once again, that was nowhere to be found... You're supposed
to be helping people or fighting crime or something... not arresting kids for
selling ice cream on a bicycle."
