On the last Friday of every month at 5:30 a bunch of people in Seattle’s bike community get together at Westlake Center and ride through downtown. It’s called Critical Mass, and it’s usually a pretty peaceful event.

This last ride, a guy named Jace was stopping traffic and happened to stop an unmarked police van. The guys inside, undercover King County deputies, seem to have jumped out of their van and beat up Jace, only eventually identifying themselves as police officers [slog]. (A friend of mine who was there says that they smashed Jace’s head into the curb hard enough to crack his helmet.) Zack, another rider, jumped into the fight to help get his friend away from what looked like a random case of road rage, found himself pinned by the second police officer. Both of the boys went to jail.

Jace, the first guy, is being charged with possession of alcohol, because he’s a minor and he had some beers in his backpack. It seems that they’re trying to charge Zack with assaulting an officer. There are lawyers working on the whole thing now, and the Seattle bike community has come out in full force to support their friends. They’re both at home, witnesses are being interviewed, and everyone’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

I don’t know how the whole being an undercover cop thing works, but when are you supposed to reveal yourself? Is blocking traffic really a reason to jump out of your car and start throwing punches?