NEW YORK (AP) — Jaywalking — that time-honored practice of crossing the street outside of the crosswalk or against the traffic light — is now legal in New York City.
Cops around me regularly use jaywalking for fuckery too. I lived in a low income apartment directly across the street from a convenient store. Basically a stones throw from apartment property entrance to store front door. It wasn’t a terribly busy road, it was four lanes and did get traffic, but it was pretty easy to find breaks in the flow and cross.
To get from the apartment to the store legally, you had to walk nearly a quarter mile (400m) to the nearest cross walk, cross, then another quarter mile back to the storefront.
Police would post up outside at that store and write jaywalking tickets all day for anyone that didn’t know better. I watched those tickets escalate into detainment and occasionally searches and arrests if they argued with the officer about it.
Edit: of course if you had a car, you could just drive across the street to the store. No problem with that!
Crazy… I’ve always suspected it was some kind of targeted BS. They spend money to pay a cop to sit there all day and ticket broke people with $150 fees, when they could paint a ped crosswalk and make the store easy to access. It felt designed to be actively hostile to pedestrians. And of course there’s always tenats moving in and out, constant source of new ppl that didn’t know how strict they are.
Cops around me regularly use jaywalking for fuckery too. I lived in a low income apartment directly across the street from a convenient store. Basically a stones throw from apartment property entrance to store front door. It wasn’t a terribly busy road, it was four lanes and did get traffic, but it was pretty easy to find breaks in the flow and cross.
To get from the apartment to the store legally, you had to walk nearly a quarter mile (400m) to the nearest cross walk, cross, then another quarter mile back to the storefront.
Police would post up outside at that store and write jaywalking tickets all day for anyone that didn’t know better. I watched those tickets escalate into detainment and occasionally searches and arrests if they argued with the officer about it.
Edit: of course if you had a car, you could just drive across the street to the store. No problem with that!
What you describe is really common, and it uses “jaywalking” as a weapon to target minorities and those in low-income neighbourhoods.
On the podcast “The War on Cars”, this topic came up with examples showing how jaywalking becomes an excuse to target blacks.
Crazy… I’ve always suspected it was some kind of targeted BS. They spend money to pay a cop to sit there all day and ticket broke people with $150 fees, when they could paint a ped crosswalk and make the store easy to access. It felt designed to be actively hostile to pedestrians. And of course there’s always tenats moving in and out, constant source of new ppl that didn’t know how strict they are.
How about a bicycle, would crossing the street with a bicycle be legal?
Ya know, that’s a good question. I suppose technically bikes can enter the road, so I think that would be okay.
Funny, google actually caught a “criminal” red-handed. Red light circled in the distance is the crosswalk.