In Le Lys Rouge (The Red Lily), Anatole France wrote, "La loi, dans un grand souci d'egalite, interdit aux riches comme aux pauvres de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain." The law, he says, in all of its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges, begging on the streets and stealing bread.
Inspector Javert, who pursues Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, could have uttered that--without irony or sarcasm. France, though, meant it as an indictment of folks like Javert and what they represent: They might pursue justice "blindly," but the wrath of it falls more on the poor and otherwise vulnerable and marginalized: Not only are we less able to defend ourselves if we're stopped, arrested or charged; we are more likely to be arrested and charged--or simply stopped and questioned--whether or not we committed any offense.
(Trust me, I know from whence I speak.*)
Moreover, those stops and arrests do little to nothing to enhance public safety and do little to nothing besides undermining people's trust in the police and the criminal justice system.
The previous paragraph isn't my opinion, or that of a public defender or judge in the Bronx. Rather, it's a paraphrase of the rationale a State Attorney in Hillsborough County--at the western end of Florida's I-4 corridor, politically one of this country's quintessential "swing" areas--gave for a new policy.
Six weeks ago, Andrew Warren issued a memo sent a memo saying that it's no longer appropriate to prosecute someone stopped on a bike if their only offense is that they resisted an officer without violence. In that memo, he noted that while Black defendants make up a third of misdemeanor cases in the county, which includes Tampa, they represent 49 percent of all "resisting without violence" arrests. And more than 70 percent of such cases that resulted from a bike or pedestrian stop had Black defendants--even though roughly one in five county residents is Black.
These findings did not surprise Black residents of the area, especially in light of a 2015 report documenting that Tampa police stopped disproportionate numbers of cyclists, 80 percent of whom were Black. Those numbers were so egregious they drew the ire of the Department of Justice and helped to popularize the lament, "Bicycling While Black."
Warren's memo became the basis for his declaration that it is no longer appropriate to prosecute those stopped on bikes if their only charge is resisting an officer without violence, and as long as the "stop" is not related to some other, more serious, offense. While the number of affected cases, he admits, is small (about 40 or so per year), it will not tie up police time and other resources that could be deployed against crimes that are true threats to pubic safety, but also make, if in a small way, the criminal justice system fairer by not burdening poor and Black cyclists, most of whom are young, with criminal records for minor offenses.
After all, the law, in all of its majestic equality, not only allows the poor as well as the rich, Black as well as White, and female as well as male (or genderqueer) to cycle or simply go about their business. At least, it should.
*--More than once, I have been stopped by police officers who had absolutely no reason to do so. Once, in Lido Beach, Nassau County, the officer claimed I was "riding between cars'--where in the books such a law is embedded, I don't know--when, in fact, I was riding on the shoulder of the road, to the right of the two lanes of traffic.
