Steve-O Jailed 30 Days For Protesting, Begged Attorney For Jail Time [Video]
Steve-O will be spending the holidays behind bars after a Los Angeles County judge gave the Jackass star 30 days for protesting. The stunt that landed him in hot water was intended to protest the captivity of orcas at SeaWorld, and Steve-O claims to have begged for jail time instead of community service.
Last August, Steve-O broadcast himself climbing to the top of a 100-foot construction crane in Los Angeles. The video, which you can watch below, shows the actor inflating an orca baloon he calls “Shammy” and commenting on the number of police cars and fire trucks that arrive on the scene. He later shot off a number of fireworks.
As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Steve-O was arrested for stunt, which he said was his way of protesting the treatment of orca whales at SeaWorld. The “Shammy” balloon had “SeaWorld sucks” written on it, which is visible in the video.
The Daily Mail reports that Steve-O was eventually slapped with five misdemeanor charges in connection with the protest and later made a plea deal. Spokesman for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office said that the actor pleaded no contest to the charges, including trespassing and illegally setting off fireworks.
As part of the deal, Steve-O was sentenced to 30 days in jail for his protesting stunt. He was also ordered to pay almost $14,000, according to the Daily Mail, which will reimburse the city of Los Angeles for the cost of all the emergency responders that the actor joked about in his video.
According to TMZ, the amount of restitution is only $7,409, and Steve-O will also have to stay out of Hollywood for an unspecified amount of time. The actor will also only be allowed to perform his stunts in the LA area for a probationary period of three years, and then only if he obtains the necessary permits.
TMZ caught up with Steve-O at LAX, and the actor didn’t seem too concerned about having been sentenced to 30 days for protesting.
After thinking a while, Steve-O concedes that he won’t say that the sentence was harsh. Instead, he reads his “personal statement,” which he also posted to Instagram along with a cartoon that juxtaposes the actor’s upcoming 30 days in county jail with the plight of the orcas at SeaWorld.
https://instagram.com/p/8i1rRPQqxE/
“I must say I’m ready to go to jail,” Steve-O writes. “Not just because it will bring so much attention to the plight of orcas in captivity, but because it’s nice to let people know I haven’t lost my edge. What can I say, I’m a jackass.”
He also plugs his new campaign to raise money for at-risk inner city youth and his upcoming Showtime special that’s appropriately titled “Steve-O: Guilty as Charged.”
Most people, and especially most celebrities, would have probably tried to avoid jail time in Steve-O’s position, but he told TMZ that he actually asked for it.
“I said please, because then I can get it over with quicker,” Steve-O told TMZ. “That’s what I told my criminal lawyer. Man, I don’t think they’d ever heard it before, not from a celebrity client anyway. I said, ‘How better to punctuate a statement about captivity than to go to jail.’ I specifically, explicitly, begged my criminal attorney for jail time.”
According to Steve-O, he would rather go to jail than do community service, because doing community service would interfere with his schedule too much. So instead, he’ll be spending 30 days in jail, and checking in just in time for the holidays.
According to the Daily Mail, the actor was ordered to turn himself in to serve his 30 days in December.
When asked if he’s worried about spending 30 days in county jail over his protest, Steve-O said that he’ll be on “Robert Downey Jr block.”
[Image credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images, NOAA, YouTube]
