Joshua “Lakey” Hinson exchanges words with a Leon Valley police officer moments before being arrested for drawing on a sidewalk with nonpermanent chalk. Those charges have since been dropped. Credit: Facebook / Lakey Hinson

A San Antonio chalk artist said he may file a lawsuit after being wrongfully arrested for creating nonpermanent artwork on a public sidewalk in Leon Valley earlier this month.

Lakey Hinson was using chalk to draw designs on a public sidewalk in front of the Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union on the afternoon of May 15 when two Leon Valley Police Department officers approached, telling him to stop, according to the Express-News.

Officers Jorge Breton, a field training officer with more than 10 years’ law enforcement experience, and Alan Gonzalez, a trainee, were responding to an anonymous tip that someone was defacing public property, the daily reports.

In a video of the incident Hinson posted on Facebook, he explains to the responding officers that he was creating chalk art on the public sidewalk, pointing out that it’s about to rain and wash away the creation anyway.

“We want to give you a break; now you’re pushing us to do this,” Breton says to Hinson in the clip as the officer can be seen placing him in handcuffs.

Once at the station, a superior, who Hinson didn’t identify, tells Breton that what the artist was doing was not an arrestable offense, police body-cam footage shared by Hinson shows. Breton responds that he’s going to double-check if Hinson was breaking the law and would probably “just let him go.”

“You gotta be careful because if you bring someone back here for something like that and we unlawfully detain them, then that could open [us] up to a lawsuit,” the superior tells Breton.

All charges against Hinson have since been dropped.

Indeed, in the social media post, Hinson hints that he still may take legal action against the Leon Valley Police Department.

“In relation to all of this, the most important thing to me is to find an attorney to the case pro bono,” Hinson said wrote on Facebook.

The incident prompted the city of Leon Valley to issue an official apology to Hinson, even inviting him to a community event last weekend to celebrate public chalk art. Even so, Hinson is still pissed off about the ordeal.

“On one hand, I appreciate the apology, because apologizing is a good thing to do when you’re wrong,” Hinson wrote. “But I was wrongfully kidnapped by two armed ‘peace officers’ over sidewalk chalk, on public property, just before a storm that was going to wash everything away.”

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This article appears in Jun 14-27, 2023.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...