SALT LAKE CITY - When officers and a skate boarder came together Tuesday night at a park in Sugar House, things got nasty real quick.
“He used two hands to push him to the ground,” said an upset Mason McMahon, a skater who saw the whole thing.
“This kid comes to the park, and I don’t even know how old he is, maybe 10,” McMahon said. “The kid dropped his pants at the park and his mom said he’s special ed, so it’s OK. He told the kid to pull his pants up, and the little kid told his mom he was being harassed.”
“We were called to the park around 8:30,” said Detective Brian Ungricht with Salt Lake City Police. “The call was simply because we had one juvenile harassing another juvenile. Our officers arrived on scene and made contact, and he was very uncooperative and unwilling to work with law enforcement.”
A cell phone video that captured the five-minute interaction with Salt Lake City police was shot by a friend of McMahon who was at the park.
“I just don’t think he thought he did anything wrong,” McMahon said of her friend. “He felt he didn’t need to answer any of their questions, which is understandable, but it could have gone better if he had cooperated.”
Her friend, a minor, was taken to the ground and detained, and another man who came to his defense was arrested.
“I think both sides could have handled it differently,” McMahon concluded.
