Name: Jaywalking decriminalization is coming, 100 years after the auto industry helped make it a crime - Virginia Mercury
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Jaywalking decriminalization is coming, 100 years after the auto industry helped make it a crime - Virginia Mercury

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0:02News StoryA crosswalk on Leigh Street near the MCV campus in Downtown Richmond. (Wyatt Gordon/ For the Virginia Mercury)⁦⁩ and I believe it’s time to eliminate jaywalking laws now! There’s far more harm than good.— Charles T. Brown, MPA, CPD (@ctbrown1911)Xby Wyatt Gordon, December 21, 2020by Wyatt Gordon, December 21, 2020Though it didn’t garner as much attention as other police reform measures during the special legislative session that ended this fall, a provision to decriminalize jaywalking in a from , D-Arlington, means that come March 1, police will no longer be able to stop folks for the act of crossing the street outside of a marked crosswalk.Criminal justice reformers called it a small step along the path to reducing encounters with the police, especially for people of color.Although jaywalking will remain illegal, other advocates worry decriminalization could encourage pedestrians towards further unsafe crossings at a time when .&nbsp;But are such fears founded?Most countries would consider the concept of that Americans have been .&nbsp; In the Netherlands, for example, traffic engineers and urban planners have actually worked to lower the country’s curbs so as to encourage people to cross wherever they like.Before the advent of the automobile, pedestrians in America were widely recognized as having the right of way in all situations.&nbsp; The road to car culture’s dominance in the United States was literally paved with blood — drivers had already by 1920.&nbsp; In response, auto industry groups launched campaign to place blame for collisions on pedestrians rather than drivers.Walking while BlackThe passage of laws making jaywalking expressly illegal over the following decades also led to an increase in pedestrian interactions with the police.&nbsp; African Americans have long complained of police stops for the offense of “.”&nbsp;A 2019 audit of the New York Police Department revealed that officers issued of “illegal or unsafe crossing” tickets to Blacks and Hispanics although those two groups make up just 55 percent of the Big Apple’s population.&nbsp; A in Jacksonville, Florida similarly found Black residents received 78 percent of all tickets for “walking in the roadway where sidewalks are provided” despite comprising just 29 percent of the city’s population.The lack of such figures for Virginia localities comes down to an absence of reporting.&nbsp; “Data on police encounters is difficult to gather, especially on something like this because jaywalking is very frequently just a pretext for stopping someone and not the actual thing the police officer wants to investigate,” said — the founder and executive director of .&nbsp;&nbsp;Haywood and the other public defenders behind Hope’s bill crafted the legislation based on their experience “representing poor, Black and brown people against some of the most ridiculous reasons for stops,” such as objects dangling from rearview mirrors, loud mufflers and tinted windows among others.&nbsp;&nbsp;To Haywood and his colleagues, the disproportional enforcement of jaywalking was clear: “None of us had ever had a White client who was stopped for jaywalking. I probably jaywalk two times on my way to work every day, and I’ve never been stopped for it and likely never will. It’s just one of those things that led to racist policing.”In Arlington, roughly 65 percent of all people pulled over in traffic stops are Black despite African Americans making up just 10-12 percent of the county’s population.&nbsp; Few other Virginia localities even release such data.&nbsp;“I heard from countless communities of color that this type of thing happens to them all the time,” Hope said.&nbsp; “Jaywalking is a leading contributor of people being stopped and sometimes arrested. A disproportionate number of people that are stopped for these infractions are people of color and the purpose of this bill is to get at that issue and curb the number of negative interactions with police over minor offences.”‘Are we inferring it’s OK to jaywalk?’&nbsp;Although the case for decriminalizing jaywalking as a piece of policing reform may be clear to proponents, some advocates worry the move could send mixed messages to pedestrians. “The fact that jaywalking is used as a tool to profile folks is appalling, but the reality is that jaywalking is a risky proposition,” said Mike Doyle, founding member of .&nbsp; “By decriminalizing it are we inferring that it’s OK to jaywalk?”Doyle’s concern stems from Virginia law’s stance on . “What that term means is if the person who has been hit by a car is deemed to be even one percent at fault for the crash, then that person that was run over doesn’t get a single cent of compensation,” said Doyle. “Most of the time the driver is the one at fault, but it doesn’t matter because the car always wins and the pedestrian always loses in a crash.”Other advocates argue decriminalization won’t trigger a spike in jaywalking because the true deterrent to pedestrians for an unsafe crossing was never a fine but rather the risk of being run over. “I don’t think this bill will encourage even one person to jaywalk,” Haywood said. “Maybe people will behave differently when there is a cop looking directly at them at an intersection, but other than that I don’t think anything will change. Around where I live the cops jaywalk too.”Hope said the legislation is unlikely to cause an increase in dangerous crossings: “It doesn’t say that these infractions are no longer illegal, just that they can’t be the primary reason for someone to be stopped.”The danger of disinvestmentFocusing on the act of jaywalking is to ignore the larger historical and structural context that has made crossing the road so dangerous, especially for people of color, argues , a senior researcher and adjunct professor at .“I find it disingenuous to hold accountable a population for jaywalking when they lack the proper infrastructure to traverse their communities safely to begin with,” he said. “People jaywalk out of necessity, so I find it unjust that we are targeting those who jaywalk when they are basically responding to the environment which they have been given.”⁦⁩ and I believe it’s time to eliminate jaywalking laws now! There’s far more harm than good.— Charles T. Brown, MPA, CPD (@ctbrown1911)Brown points to which often demolished prosperous Black neighborhoods in favor of imposing infrastructure like inner-city highways. In Richmond, the destruction of a large portion of Jackson Ward — — for I-95 and the for new highways are a few Virginia examples of the practice.“By destroying the very fabrics of these communities by placing highways here, the government has prioritized the car over the safety of the folks who live in these communities and then overpolices residents trying to navigate these dangerous corridors,” Brown said.&nbsp; “Only an unjust system would not provide people with the infrastructure they need to safely move through their environment and then police them for not doing so.”The criminalization of jaywalking also ignores logical, safety-based reasons people may cross mid-block.&nbsp; “In some cases people are choosing jaywalking over confrontation and potential violence,” said Brown.&nbsp;Brown hopes decriminalizing jaywalking may lead to a paradigm shift in how pedestrians in overpoliced areas perceive their world.&nbsp; “Feeling like they have the freedom to move and exist in public space like everyone else does a lot for people’s mental health and wellbeing,” Brown said. “This move could also lead to better trust and respect between law enforcement and these communities, but most importantly this will allow police to focus on the more pressing issues of violent crimes.”is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: . Follow Virginia Mercury on and .Copy to clipboard1RepublishOur stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.

0:02News StoryA crosswalk on Leigh Street near the MCV campus in Downtown Richmond. (Wyatt Gordon/ For the Virginia Mercury)⁦⁩ and I believe it’s time to eliminate jaywalking laws now! There’s far more harm than good.— Charles T. Brown, MPA, CPD (@ctbrown1911)Xby Wyatt Gordon, December 21, 2020by Wyatt Gordon, December 21, 2020Though it didn’t garner as much attention as other police reform measures during the special legislative session that ended this fall, a provision to decriminalize jaywalking in a from , D-Arlington, means that come March 1, police will no longer be able to stop folks...

Jaywalking decriminalization is coming, 100 years after the auto industry helped make it a crime - Virginia Mercury

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