A lot of the comments here seem to buy in to the summary of what the cops told the cosplayers that it’s the mall’s property so they can kick them out for whatever they want.
I doubt the cosplayers will pursue this, but if they sued that would probably not turn out to be the case, especially in Calfornia.
In Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, a group were banned from a shopping mall in California for distributing leaflets at a mall. The mall promptly ejected them and banned them. They sued and won in California state court. The mall appealed to the US Supreme Court which affirmed the State Supreme Court ruling.
“The trial court held that appellees were not entitled under either the Federal or California Constitution to exercise their asserted rights on the shopping center property, and the California Court of Appeal affirmed. The California Supreme Court reversed, holding that the California Constitution protects speech and petitioning, reasonably exercised, in shopping centers even when the center is privately owned, and that such result does not infringe appellants’ property rights protected by the Federal Constitution.”
Westfield? Oh, sheesh. When Westfield operated in the St. Louis area, they called their properties “Shopping Towns”. That was about the time I gave up going to malls.
Obviously, these steampunkers were not conformist consumers, so they had to go.
And I predict next week there will be an even BIGGER gathering of steampunks at this same mall. A good ploy would be to all arrive at different times, so the mall slowly fills with “weirdos” just milling about and slurping their Orange Juliuses like any other patron, and what do the mall cops do then, kick you out for dressing funny? Maybe the steampunks could even bring along some “punk” punks with spiked leather jackets and green hair, so they can point and say “you gonna kick him out too?”
[quote=“brian_carnell, post:40, topic:23541, full:true”]
Silly libertarians…after all, these cosplayers were lucky they didn’t get shipped off to the mall’s secret detention facility in Cuba or that the mall didn’t use its fleet of drones to take them out without any due process. At the very least, I’m surprised this mall didn’'t secretly render them to another mall that could have dealt with them in an more appropriate manner.[/quote]
Say, how do you guys manage to distinguish between government and big business?
That would be all well and good, if bad behaviour really was the exception rather than the norm. By ‘norm’ I don’t mean something everybody does, but things that nobody ever does anything about. There will always be a minority (or more) of cops who systemically abuse their authority.
The more I think about it, the stronger I feel about the solution to the problem: raising people such that cops are redundant (happens to also be the solution to a zillion other problems).
If it does not fit into little boxes made of ticky-tacky that all look the same, it is a potential threat and must be removed.
You and I here may think this repugnant, but the suits in management, the rent-a-cops keeping order and the average muggle who shops there don’t think so, and they don’t give two figs what you or I think.
My friend always bitched about the mall cops harrassing him and his friends for playing Magic and loitering at the mall food court. This would be after they would spend a ton of money at the arcade, buy Magic cards at the games store, and get food from the resturants 3-5 times a week.
Course, he was in his 20’s at the time and need to “get a fucking job!”, but still.
The mall has both a Sears and something called “The Paintball Store”. I’m betting you can purchase a knife at one and possibly a weapon at the other. I’m thinking we should ban Sears.
I used to carry a knife I bought at the mall. Pre-internet rumors that some kid had his balls cut off in the bathroom as some sort of gang thing. In hindsight, that was probably an urban legend, but at the time I figured better safe than sorry.
