I've skated everyday for the past 16 years of my life. I've ran a security company for the past 3. I've experienced both sides of the conflict therein. What I've never done is subscribed to jock mentality, been a bully, or participated in gang violence; therefore I willl never understand what it meant to have acted the way these skateboarders did.
I find it sad that skateboarding as a culture is becoming the very thing that we distanced ourselves from in the first place: That is, a culture of ignorance. Our Identity as simply "those who ride skateboards" is often subjugated by the peripheral influences of violence, narcissism, and fantasy that the media propagates throughout the mainstream. We ought to remain autonomous. Fuck the berrics. Thoughts and prayers to him and his family.