BMX bikers spark outrage in viral video

A video of BMX riders jumping over sleeping homeless people in the streets of downtown Los Angeles has gone viral and is creating a lot of outrage.

“This is just a matter of not having value for another human being,” LAPD Officer Deon Joseph told NBC Los Angeles.

The bike shop owner who posted the video isn’t planning on taking it down, even though he said he thought twice about posting the video in the first place.

“Well, being that nobody got hurt or anything, I didn’t think that it was too offensive,” OSS bike shop owner Adam Grandmaison told NBC Los Angeles. “I was complicit in it by posting on the Facebook I guess, but I also felt like, all’s well that ends well I guess you know because nobody did get hurt.”

The video posted to the OSS bike shop’s Facebook page shows three bikers jumping over at least six homeless people on the streets with a caption that reads, “Brandon Begin, Jeff Cadger and David Grant riding around near the store.”

Outrage hasn’t only sparked on the Facebook comment thread with users expressing their dissent for the video, but it has also sparked from homeless people and visitors in the downtown area.

“That’s not right, that’s not right,” one homeless person told NBC Los Angeles. A downtown visitor said, “Homeless people should be treated with respect, and they’re not pieces of furniture.”

Grandmaison told CBS Los Angeles his choice to share the video on Facebook was’t meant to disrespect the homeless.

“I basically hit the share button on Facebook, so I shared it on my thing. I wasn’t necessarily thinking of that as an endorsement,” Grandmaison told CBS Los Angeles. “I definitely should have been more conscious of what I was doing when I hit the share button, but at the same time, we have a pretty good relationship with the people around here and I think for the most part they know that we don’t have any negative feelings toward the homeless.”

Grandmaison continued to defended his choice to leave the video up in a blog post on thecomeup.com.

“I suppose this is where I should apologize for sort of kind of condoning my friends bunnyhopping over a couple of homeless people,” Grandmaison wrote. “Honestly I’ve never bunnyhopped over a homeless person but I wasn’t exactly offended seeing my friends do it either. That video captured the anti-social aspect of riding street that I’ve always loved.

“The news are trying to pass this off as us having no respect for the homeless, which apparently passes for a legitimate news story in 2014. A few hundred people briefly complaining on Facebook doesn’t strike me as something that necessitates a segment on the news. But it doesn’t exactly bother me either. Maybe, just maybe, some little kid will see that video and get motivated to ride down the street and bunnyhop over some s—-, human or not.”