Eleven Milwaukee bike polo players were arrested and ticketed for trespassing on county-owned property – a parking structure in Milwaukee’s O’Donnell Park – January 10. Milwaukee County Sheriff’s deputies broke up a game about 6 p.m., then took the participants and players to jail for ticketing and processing. Released early Monday morning, they received tickets and fines of $263.50 each.

Sheriff’s Capt. Aisha Barkow confirmed the enforcement action and said the players had been warned twice previously that they were trespassing and causing damage to the parking structure near the Milwaukee lakefront.

As part of the lakefront complex that houses the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum and the Coast Restaurant, the multilevel garage falls under the park’s department purview. But it is not an indoor sports facility, said Joe Roszak the parks department’s chief of recreation.

Roszak said parks workers assigned to the garage have encountered members of the Milwaukee Bike Polo Club playing pickup games in the past and directed them to leave the premises. The group would lay low for a bit, then return, and the informal cat-and-mouse game continued over several years, until sheriff’s deputies upped the enforcement action on January 10.

Roszak said he sympathizes with the group, but that bike polo games in the garage present a danger to cars parked there. Eric Kremin, a 21-year-old arrested while playing on Sunday night, disagreed the games present a danger to cars in the structure. The group sets up the court on the second floor of the northwest portion of the building, away from any parked cars, he said.

Jacob Newborn, one of the leaders in the Milwaukee Bike Polo Club, said the arrests would motivate the group to locate a private indoor play area while they consider a legal strategy.

— TOM HELD, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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