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Let the Naked Pumpkinheads Run

Published October 31, 2009 @ 08:16AM PT

It's Halloween hysteria in Boulder.

Police in the idyllic Colorado city have said they are committing to stopping tonight’s 11th annual naked pumpkin run. And if anyone insists on running naked through the street with a pumpkin on their head, the cops will charge all participants as sex offenders.

The run sounds silly and it’s surely offensive to some - but it’s a prank (or, to those inclined to give a big benefit of doubt, it's performance art). For a decade now, drunk college students and other Boulderites sprint through the city's downtown in their birthday suits, with a pumpkin on their head. It’s scheduled for 11 p.m. so there won’t be (many) kids around. Adults can handle seeing their neighbors anonymous and naked. To invoke the sex offender registry is beyond ridiculous.

The Boulder city council, the mayor and the local district attorney have all expressed concern with the police plan. The ACLU, of course, advocates for the right of runners to run. One lawyer -- maybe stretching just a bit -- compared the anticipated police action to recent events in Tehran.

This story makes the problems with our sex offender registry system as clear as can be. The Boulder police don't think the pumpkin runners are dangerous criminals, they're using the tools at their disposal to prevent an event they don't like. And this is a pervasive problem with the registry --for example, this post shows how countless kids are now on the registry for "Romeo and Juliet" or show-me-yours-I'll-show-you-mine incidents.

If we want our sex offender registry to work, we can't have it be full of pumpkinheads and experimenting teens. To have an effective crime prevention system, our parole officers and community corrections systems must be able to focus on people who post some threat to society.

Cracking down on the pumpkin run is a bad idea. Putting runners on the sex offender registry is potentially devastating.

The Boulder Magazine and blog elephant has been on top of this story, and reports that the run may move to an undisclosed location. More info here.

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Comments (8)

best. title. ever. I am so stealing this if I ever write a novel, to be the title.

Posted by Amanda Kloer on 10/31/2009 @ 01:18PM PT
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The police officers would be doing wrong by charging young women and young men who have run in the 11th annual naked pumpkin run as sex offenders. The idea of charging people as sex offenders for that purpose is nonsense and is why the police officers in Colorado must not charge anyone who has been charged with running naked as sex offenders. Hopefully, the ACLU will make sure that the sex offender registry is not abused by police officers.

Posted by Edwin Bonilla on 10/31/2009 @ 05:29PM PT
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Isn't Boulder Police Department the same one who screwed up the case of the little Ramsey girl?

Why expect anything less from these jerks

Posted by William Weeks on 10/31/2009 @ 10:19PM PT
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Is anyone actually surprised that police fascists are advocating this? It has come to the point that the police are less concerned with the rule of law and more concerned with writing tickets (aka fund raising) and preposterous grabs for power.

Wake up and smell the freedom.

Posted by Fred Frankenberg on 11/01/2009 @ 05:50AM PT
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UPDATE: Apparently, the threats worked and the run didn't happen (in downtown Boulder at least). Four people ran through town with pumpkins on their heads, but they had clothes on. Here's a report from the Daily Camera (where I worked as an intern more than 10 years ago).

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_13688649

The sex offender registry wins again.

Posted by Matt Kelley on 11/01/2009 @ 06:43AM PT
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Just another example of America's intolerant puritanism raising its big ugly head. My views on this are pretty simple: "No victim, no crime.." This is made doubly bad by the fact that handfuls of young kids might be scarred for life as sex offenders....

Even if you thought there was some sort of problem caused by this type of behavior, the punishment should fit the crime. Seeing as how this is clearly not a serious "crime" and obviously nobody is being physically harmed, registering them as "sex offenders" is completely outrageous.

Posted by Jason Martin on 11/02/2009 @ 08:03PM PT
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The Pumpkin Run sounds like good clean fun to me. The Boulder morality police need to pull their heads out of you-know-where, and get with the program. To invoke the sex offender statute in obscene? "Just using the tools at their disposal?" Why not just SHOOT them? They should lock up the police for one night, and let the Pumpkin Run go ahead as planned.

Posted by Richard Savary on 11/04/2009 @ 11:11AM PT
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Oops. That ? after "obscene" was meant to be an !

Posted by Richard Savary on 11/04/2009 @ 11:12AM PT
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Matt has worked and volunteered in various capacities in criminal justice reform for several years. When he's not blogging, he works as the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project. Views expressed here are Matt's, and don't represent the positions of the Innocence Project.

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