Skateboarder and Officer Confrontation Caught on Tape

Tensions between skaters and police have been high recently in Charleston, South Carolina. Business owners and residents have been complaining to the police for months that skaters, or skate boarders, have been destroying private property and have become verbally abusive to ordinary people.

But an incident that happened in downtown Charleston earlier this month is leaving residents and even police asking if some officers are taking the issue of trying to curb the skaters fun to far.

Recently a home video has surfaced showing 19 year old Corey Dowds skating in a Charleston park. The video was being shot by his brother Cheyne while the two were, as they admitted, skating illegal at the Waterpark in downtown Charleston. Skateboarding is illegal in all of downtown Charleston, but that hasn't stopped skaters from trying to defy the polices orders to stay away from the area. Dowds can be seen on the video at first skating on the ground and then grinding, or doing a jump, with his board onto a marble bench. As he came around to the end of the bench an unidentified police officer can be seen charging and suddenly shoving Dowds off his board and into some bushes behind the board.

As Dowds tried to climb out of the bushes Cheyne, on video, asks the officer why she just shoved him off his board and whether she knew she had just assaulted someone. A verbal fight ensued between the officer and Cheyne until Corey himself came out of the bushes and started a verbal fight with the officer.

Local news station WIS 10 in Charleston showed the video to the Chief of Police for Charleston who said he believed "the officers actions may have been excessive" but he would need to speak to her first and do a review of the incident before he decided which direction he was going to take with disciplining the officer or not.

The brothers have filed a complaint with the police department and the family want answers now as to why the officer acted in the way she did. Corey showed off the scratches he sustained when he fell in the bushes and said he also rolled his ankle, which resulted in 2 weeks of pain to his foot, ankle and left leg. Corey said the reason he waited this long to release the tape to the media was because he wasn't sure if he would get in trouble for skating in the Waterpark illegally, but that he now feels people should see what the officer did to him and he wants to make sure it never happens to another skater again.

Cheyne, who owns the Fairmont Skate Shops in Mount Pleasant and Charleston said that the police have been overly excessive with the force they have been showing to skaters recently and that several of his friends have been ticketed and had their boards confiscated, forcing them to walk home. Cheyne also said "For a cop to assault a teenager is just insane. It should never happen".