HALIFAX — Marc Almon was out for a quick bike ride when a cruiser started to follow him near the police station on Gottingen Street.

Almon had neglected to wear a helmet on his bike ride last Thursday, so officers tried to pull him over.

“I wanted to make a statement by just carrying on,” he said in an interview Friday.

Almon said he didn’t want to stop and talk to officers about the issue right then, he just wanted to carry on with his day.

“It was not meant to be a defiance,” he said.

Almon came up to an intersection and said he felt like it would be an awkward place to stop, so he continued biking along.

The police took that as him trying to flee law enforcement, Almon said.

As he went through the intersection, Almon remembers thinking “Maybe this is a mistake.”

The officer then turned on the lights of the cruiser.

“I heard the car racing after me,” Almon said, so he moved to the sidewalk for fear he would be forced into a dangerous situation.

Two police cars approached him, Almon said, one from behind and one coming towards him.

That’s when he decided he better stop.

“They got out and were quite aggressive. They searched me for weapons. I was careful to be respectful, but at the same time recognizing I have my own rights,” Almon said.

Almon said he was written tickets for failing to obey a police officer, riding a bicycle without a helmet, failing to ride a bicycle on the right side of roadway and riding a bicycle on a sidewalk.

The single incident left him with $691.25 in fines.

Although Almon said he feels the police overreacted, they were still professional. They were just doing their jobs, he added.

Almon feels police issued him the tickets to send a message, but that he has his own message.

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He has had an issue with the mandatory helmet laws in Halifax for quite some time, he said.

“I think the intent is good to encourage people to wear helmets and be safe. At the same time, I feel it is a little over the top and doesn’t allow for any individual discretion,” he said.

“That is the law at this point, and I understand that, but I think it should be examined.”

There are many cities across Canada and the world that allow people to make their own decisions about wearing a helmet, he said.

“I feel like this law puts particular pressure on the poor — if they get a ticket for biking without a helmet it may discourage them from biking in the city again.”

Almon was in his late teens when he was first issued a $160 ticket for riding helmetless, he said, and “they made me feel like a criminal.”

Coming from a “middle-class family” Almon said he was able to deal with the ticket at the time, but he was always worried such a fee would be “devastating” to those who didn’t have the means to pay.

“That is one of the reasons I think we should look at changing the law,” Almon said.

After posting about the incident on Twitter, Almon has caught some public backlash from those who say he deserves the tickets since he was actually breaking a law.

Despite those comments, Almon said he will fight the tickets in court.

StarMetro reached out to Halifax Regional Police for more information on the incident, but they did they not provide a response.

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