Pretzel Logic
Good deeds rarely go unpunished in the city that gloves you back.
Just ask skateboarders Mark Laman, a New Jersey contractor, and Josh Nims, budding attorney and, as it happens, City Paper ad campaign poster boy.
On Sept. 17, Laman and Nims, as they have nearly daily for the past five years, were showing some love to the city’s beleaguered skate rat community by helping construct skate ramps under I-95 at FDR Park.
Laman had driven his girlfriend’s pickup truck, loaded down with cement rubble, to the park. Nims, who has provided pro bono legal representation to skateboarders, was helping Laman unload the rubble.
“We have been doing this for years,” says Nims, adding that he and Laman thought nothing of a car parked nearby. And they thought nothing of it when people got out of the car. “It’s not unusual for people to get out and help. That’s how these things get built.”
But it was very unusual, both men say, when the people in the car announced that they were Philadelphia police officers and were placing Laman and Nims under arrest.
Specifically, Laman was charged with three counts of scattering rubbish and one count of public nuisance. Nims was charged with one count of scattering rubbish. Both men face jail time and fines. The arrests were especially surprising, say Laman and Nims, because skateboarders have long had an informal arrangement with Fairmount Park officials to build a skate park. Fairmount Park officials could not be reached for comment by deadline. Police spokesman James Pauley acknowledges that park officials are working with skaters, but stands by the arrests. “There is a dumping problem in the park,” he says.
“Hundreds of people work on this,” says Nims, again denying any dumping took place. “It was shocking to be suddenly arrested for doing something we’ve been doing for years.”
Shocking or not, both men were cuffed and taken to the police lockup at 24th and Wolf.
For their heinous crimes against society, Nims was held 17 hours, Laman 26 hours.
“It was cold, so cold,” says Nims. “It was very dirty, far worse then I ever heard of a jail being.”
“It was horrible,” says Laman. “It was the most filthy, disgusting place I have ever been in.”
The ordeal has scarred both men.
Nims, who came to Philadelphia in 1997 from South Carolina, has dabbled in politics and fears the arrest will damage his career.
“I am awaiting the results of my bar exam and I am concerned about this being a blot on my record,” says the 27-year-old Nims. “Even if I am ultimately exonerated for this, it draws negative attention to me, and this is a key moment in my life as a professional.”
With his arrest, Laman, 39, has clearly taken a tumble on the half-pipe of life.
“Unfortunately, I was unable to get in touch with anyone,” says Laman, whose family owns the Laman Loesche Supply Company in South Philly. “My girlfriend thought I was out all night. She didn’t talk to me for a week. My parents have since stopped talking to me because they feel the police could not be wrong. I lost a contracting job I was supposed to bid on that night. I’ve had quite a financial turnaround since then and now I have to declare bankruptcy, because that is the only way I can show that I really am broke and can be given a public defender.”
In the meantime, Laman says he has had to keep this ordeal from his kids, 11 and 9.
“I’m hiding it from my children,” he says. “I don’t want them to get a bad attitude about the police. And if my ex-wife finds out, I am in deep doodoo.”
The arrests of Nims and Laman are more than just inconveniences for two individuals.
The action has a chilling effect on a vibrant community already disenfranchised by Mayor John Street’s decision to change Love Park from a skateboarding Mecca to a sterile concrete hole.
“There is no lack of irony in being arrested for doing the very type of pro bono work I always have,” says Nims. “I have been giving away time and money and my life in helping skateboarders and I went to jail for it. I don’t know if I can continue that.”
Laman says the arrests have stopped progress at the skate park, one of the few places skateboarders can hang in the city.
“We have people willing to donate concrete and services and labor,” says Laman. “We have more clean fill ready to go. But now everyone is afraid to come here and work on the skate park. They are all afraid they will get arrested.”
Nims, who appears in an upcoming CP ad campaign featuring people with interesting lives, faces a trial on the summary charge against him on Oct. 17. Laman is scheduled to go to court Nov. 20.
Both men say they’ve learned an unfortunate lesson about Philly.
“I feel like I was helping an old lady across the street and was arrested and put in jail when I got to the other side,” says Nims.
Laman is more blunt in his disgust.
“This city is an overlapping quilt of unorganized people all fighting for their little spot in the limelight to get money,” he says. “It reaffirms my belief that you can’t explain yourself to the police, so, even if you’ve done nothing wrong, you should run.”
