They Are Supposed To Protect Us. Who Will Protect Us From Them?

They park their work--and personal--vehicles in bike lanes while munching on Big Macs.  They tail you at intersections, just as the light is changing, and force you to choose between going through the intersection or stopping and getting rammed from behind. Or they jump out from behind bushes in a park and make cyclists speed up--above the speed limit--to avoid them.

Oh, and sometimes they don't bother with those tactics and cut to the chase:  They assault, in some cases sexually, cyclists.

By now, you've probably guessed that I'm talking about police officers.  I have witnessed or experienced everything I've experienced from "men in blue" here in New York.  But, perhaps not surprisingly, none of those things are unique to my hometown.

According to Molly Hurford, Toronto police have turned that city's High Park into a "battleground" in which cyclists have been spuriously ticketed for "speeding" and "trespassing."  

 

Oh, but it gets worse.  Last Tuesday, an officer--one who has been ticketing cyclists, no less--drove his SUV into the park.  Just outside the park, a cyclist who was riding in the bike lane stopped at a four-way stop, with the officer to his left.  The officer turned his vehicle directly into him. The cyclist wasn't injured, but his bike sustained over $2000 in damage.  

The officer claimed that the sun was in his eyes.  Lawyer and cycling advocate David Shelnutt, who has taken up the cyclist's case pro bono, said, "In no other incident would 'the sun being in his eyes' be an acceptable excuse for any traffic violation."  At the very least, he says, that officer ran a red light; the sun shouldn't have made a cyclist invisible only four feet from the officer.  The city's Traffic Services says it's continuing its investigation.

The Roman poet Juvenal could have had the incident in mind when he wrote, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"--Who will guard the guardians?  Who protect cyclists (or anyone else) from those who are supposed to protect them?

Is The Idaho Stop A Racial Justice Issue?

In previous posts, I have advocated "Idaho Stop," which allows cyclists to roll through stop signs at empty intersections and to treat stoplights as "stop" signs.  As the name indicates, it was first codified into law in The Gem State--in 1982. Despite proof that it does more than almost anything else to promote cycling safety--after all, an intersection is the most dangerous place for a cyclist--it's been slow to spread to other jurisdictions. 

Now, Colorado might be ready to join them.  A few cities and towns within the Centennial State have already legalized it, or modified versions of it.  But a bill that would allow the "Idaho Stop" statewide is about to go to Governor Jared Polis' desk, having passed both the state's House and Senate.  A spokesman for the Governor did not say whether or not he'll sign it.

Massimo Alpian hopes he does.  A lifelong cyclist, he surely understands how such a law will help to make cycling safer by reducing the risk of, say, being clipped by a right-turning vehicle in front of him.  But the also believes the "Idaho stop" could be a racial justice issue.

Photo by Hart Van Denberg, from CPR News

Years ago, he recalls, he was riding blazing down a road near Boulder.  Three cyclists in front of him shot through a "Stop" sign.  He followed, "right around the same speed," he says.  Then "I was pulled over and ticketed," he recounts.

Now, some might say that as officers in such situations are wont to do, they went after the "low hanging fruit," i.e., the last cyclist in a line.  But Alpian, all of these years later, still wonder whether something else was at play.  You see, he is the son of immigrants from Latin America and the Middle East.  The three cyclists in front of him were Caucasian.  

I get the impression that his diplomacy skills are better than mine.  He says he was "confused" as to why he was targeted. "If I was doing something blatantly egregious, sure, I'd feel bad that maybe I was breaking the law or putting other folks at risk."  But what he did would have been perfectly legal under an "Idaho Stop" regulation and, law or no law, put nobody at risk.  So, it's hard to blame him for harboring any thought that he was stopped because of his brown skin.

That, he says, is one reason why he wants Governor Polis to sign the bill into law.

I wonder whether the cops who stopped him went on to become Senators from Texas and Tennessee.

He Understands The Value Of A Bike

Bicycles are extremely valuable pieces of equipment.  Quite often, they are more valuable than the motor cars their owners possess.

That insight comes from William Hart.  That is, Judge William Hart to you—and me.

The Bristol Crown Court magistrate made that observation in sentencing Michael Whatley and Steven Fry to 66 and 4O months, respectively, for charges that include stealing several high-end bikes from Friction Cycles in Bristol.

For that statement alone, I would be willing to sponsor Judge Hart were he willing to abdicate Her Majesty’s justice system and bring his wisdom to this land of anti-vaxers. Of course, it’s difficult to imagine why he’d want to do such a thing—or that he would need sponsorship from me, or anyone else.

I am guessing—or at least hoping—that such a wise and worldly person would understand that the value of bikes to their owners, whether intrinsic or relative to their cars, is more than monetary—especially for folks like yours truly who don’t have a car, or even a driver’s license.  

If nothing else, the Honorable William Hart merits my respect—and, I am sure, that of many readers of this blog—simply for understanding that bike theft should be taken as seriously as other kinds of crimes: something too few of his colleagues, or law enforcement officers, in the United States do.

Policing Of Cyclists is A Social And Economic Justice Issue

For a very brief time in my youth, I worked in sales.  As with jobs of that kind, numbers were everything:  I, and other salespeople, were rated on the number of sales and the dollar value of them.

Knowing that, I, of course, went for the easiest "closes." (A "close" is a completed sale.)  After I drained the pool of easy marks, I realized that I hated sales and quit soon after.

There are other lines of work in which people are similarly evaluated.  Management calls those numbers "metrics" and use them, not only to decide on promotions, but also whether to continue someone's employment.  Such a situation, I discovered, also prevails in the academic world:  Decisions on tenure, promotions and continued employment are based on, among other things (like the ever-so-concrete category called "collegiality") the number of a faculty member's publications, and how much grant money he or she brings to the institution.

If anyone asks you what a professor and a police officer have in common, now you know.  In many departments--including the one in the "City of Angels"--police are judged by, among other things, the number of tickets they write and arrests they make.  Here I have no truck with conspiracy theories:  Constables themselves have said as much.  They also admit that they go after cyclists because we're the proverbial low-hanging fruit.  I am learning that I am not the only cyclist who's been stopped by cops--and ticketed--for something I didn't do.

One way you can tell a true salesperson, without knowing his or her numbers, is that such a person is a "schmoozer" (which I can be, when I feel like it) and gets a rush out of engaging, and closing the deal with, a customer.  It always seemed to me that to a true salesperson, the deal or the sale is, to them, as the painting or sculpture is to an artist.

Many police officers, I suspect, get a similar thrill out of a "collar."  "Everybody loves a good bust," said J.P. Harris, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's lieutenant who now sits on the Sheriff's Civilian Oversight Board.  "The person who makes the right hooks, they are respected, they are admired."

A source for the Sheriff--who asked to remain anonymous because he's not authorized to speak in public--confirmed the suspicions I, and probably many of you have about why we're targeted:  "Like a lion looking for prey, what is she going to do?"  The source explained, "That's what cops do--they look for the easiest stop."

From the Good Word News

That also partially explains why non-white cyclists are disproportionately ticketed and arrested while riding their bicycles.  Another officer explained that when cyclists are stopped, it's not really about the missing reflector or bell, although that's might be the reason the officer gives when he or she approaches a cyclist.  Also, that officer explained, the goal isn't always to write a ticket, though that is often the result. 

Rather, stopping a cyclist--especially in a low-income neighborhood, and especially if the cyclist is not white--is really seen as a gateway to making an arrest for something more serious, like gun or drug possession.  Another officer explained that when was a new assistant in Compton, his training officer told him that in low-income areas like Compton, he should assume that any adult on a bicycle had most likely lost his (they're usually male) license because of some crime he'd committed.  

In other words, that law enforcement agent was trained to see any cyclist in a low-income neighborhood as a criminal. And he says he wasn't the only one inculcated with that notion.

That sort of training continued for years, even though it didn't produce the expected results.  According to a Los Angeles Times investigation, 44,000 cyclists were arrested in the county from 2017 until July of this year.  Of them, 85 percent were searched.  Only 8 percent of those searches revealed illegal items, and weapons were seized only 164 times, or in only 0.5  percent of all searches.

Perhaps the most galling aspect of those stops, arrests and seizures--and the training and mentality that produces them--is that they target the very cyclists who are least able to defend themselves against the charges.  It's hard not to think that makes poor black and brown cyclists such appealing targets for sheriff's assistants with itchy ticket-writing fingers:  Cops don't look good to their peers or superiors when their summonses are dismissed or charges dismissed. (That, by the way, is also the reason why the so-called War On Drugs so decimated black and brown communities:  Cops won't arrest a pot-smoking prep school kid whose parents can afford a good lawyer.)  In rare cases, large numbers of frivolous citations and arrests lead to disciplinary measures against and, even more uncommonly, dismissal of officers.

So, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the way cyclists are policed isn't just a first-world, white people's issue:  It's a matter of social and economic justice.