bizzz111

In situations like this, the cops would get themselves a lot more positive PR if they wrote warnings instead of tickets.

They still get the message out that cyclists should be obeying the laws, yet they don't look like complete chumps for targeting a charity event.

In the future the cops would probably serve the community better by setting up a relief station or volunteering to do traffic/crowd control.

Paul Barnard

Bingo. I did LE for 20 years and was smart enough to figure out that often times not writing a ticket served the greatest overall good. It shouldn't be hard for cops to see that with all the recent high profile excessive force cases popping up on You Tube and the like that public confidence and trust is rapidly eroding. I NEEDED public cooperation, trust and respect to most effectively discharge my duties as an LEO

dougmc

Possibly. And they'd probably be better off not tazering grandmas, even when grandma repeatedly doesn't do as she's told and dares them to do it. But sometimes individual cops on the street don't consider how things might look -- they just do their jobs, usually according to the laws and policies set before them.
Are we talking about the police serving the community, or getting positive PR? The two are not the same thing.

One of the jobs of the police is to enforce traffic laws. They found cyclists violating them, and they enforced the law. Perhaps they could have improved their PR by doing it in a different way, but either way, they were doing their job and serving the community just fine.

Paul Barnard

Yeah, because bicyclists are often the cause of injury to other road users.

dougmc

You're not assuming that the police's only purpose is to prevent people from causing injury to others, are you?

I don't favor the police giving out tickets to people who roll at one mph through a stop sign, car or bike, charity ride or not. But I do realize that the law generally prohibits that, and the police's job is to enforce that law, so when they do that, they're just doing their job.

Ultimately, if you don't want to get a ticket, you obey the law. If you want to disobey the law in some way that's still reasonably safe, I have no problems with that, but you should be aware that you do run the risk of a ticket or something similar, especially if you don't check for police around first. Expecting the police to not fine you just because you're raising money for MS [in an indirect way] is just ... wishful thinking.

StrangeWill

Act like that at your job and see how long you keep it. Doing your job > Doing what you think is good for PR, almost always.

bizzz111

Wow, I've heard of adhering to the letter of the law, but this is ridiculous. Cops are given wide latitude in how they enforce the law, and yes, how they choose to enforce the law plays a big part in how the community responds to them. Just because someone breaks a law doesn't mean the police have to give them a ticket. There are many ways to enforce the law without giving a ticket, a warning is one of them. Not just a verbal warning either. I've seen many written warnings.

Strangewill, I don't understand your statement at all. I'm given wide latitude in my job as well. As long as I produce results, the boss doesn't care how I do it. Some managers choose to micromanage employees and I don't think that would be a job I would want to keep. Nor would I want to live in a town where the police were expected to ticket each and every infraction they observed. PR is a huge part of being a police officer. Ask any chief of police.

tadawdy

I read another news article about the event. The most annoying thing is that the police claimed they took increased action because they received complaints about cyclists on the road, and one respondent to the article supported that notion. So f****** what? Does that mean if I call the police to complain about cars being in my way, they'll come and ticket people? Generally, if you want to write a driver a ticket, you can find something. It is obvious that the cyclists were just an easy target. Everyone knows we don't follow the letter of the law. It simply isn't efficient or practical in a lot of cases.

I keep hearing stories of people being ticketed on bikes because people called the police and complained about cyclists. In some cases, this is the rider's only real infraction.

Still, you do have to follow the laws that govern vehicles. I am surprised, to be honest, that more communities do not require bicycle registration, licensing, and insurance. easy ways to bilk you out of cash.

hotbike

Yeah, and the cops get lots of complaints about jaywalkers when the NYC Marathon is taking place.

Keith99

Bolding mine.

Amazing how many posts after yours that still assume they ticked a lot oc cyclists and berating the cops!

Any bets that the ones ticked totally blew the stop signs and that if one of them got cleaned out by a car the same people complaining about the police now would be complaining abotu the police not preventing the death?

noisebeam

^^^ well there is this perspective from someone who claimed to witness the ticketing:
https://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.p...5&postcount=69

devilshaircut

The absurdity of this reminds me of this:

https://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/...ine/index.html

Yeah it's illegal, but doesn't it seems a little absurd? The woman above should be punished for having bad taste in music before being a pirate.

StrangeWill

"As long as I produce results"
Except you wouldn't, not writing tickets == producing no results.


I would have a problem if the ride was clear to use the road uninterrupted, but they were specifically instructing that all rules of the road be followed and all signed obeyed. It was disrespectful to the charity ride to not abide by their wishes in the first place.

Paul Barnard

I'm pretty well aware of the many functions of an officer of the law. You wouldn't be assuming that a ticket is the only or even the most effective way for an officer of the law to discharge his duties would you?

In 20 years of law enforcement I never said "I was just doing my job." That's a patsyassed comment. I took the action that I did because I felt strongly that it was necessary to serve the greater good of the public as a whole.

cc_rider

Seem that the Loudon County sheriff's department is sensitive to the bad press from the Post article. Last weekend there was Tour de Cure ride around Loudon. I was talking with one of the road marshal coordinators last night, and he said that they met with the sheriff's department ahead of time, and that instead of ticketing cyclists the deputies did traffic control at intersections, holding up cars and waving groups of bikes on through.

Keith99

His claim seems inconsistent with only 8 tickets being issued in total.

dougmc

No, but if an officer gave me a ticket for rolling through a stop sign, I'd see two likely people to blame --

1) him, for enforcing a law through a ticket that has minor safety implications at best, or
2) myself, for breaking the law -- with a cop watching.

Which do you think would be more appropriate? (Sure, he could have given me a warning, but he didn't. Damn him!)

It's one way for him to discharge his duties. I'd even say it's appropriate -- breaking the law in front of a cop isn't exactly smart, and if somebody can't be watching carefully enough to notice a cop, it's possible they're not watching carefully enough to see a pedestrian or car or something in the intersection.
So you never gave anybody a ticket for rolling through a stop sign or red light at a low rate of speed? If so, good for you! But I don't think all cops can say that.

(This is also assuming that you've worked as a traffic cop. I do not know. If your job has never been to give out traffic tickets, it probably shouldn't surprise me that you haven't given out traffic tickets of a certain type ...)

noisebeam

If I was on a large nationally organized charity ride and saw a police officer standing on the corner I would roll right thru and wave to them thank you for supporting the ride.

If I was riding solo or in a club ride and saw a police officer standing on the corner I would make sure my usual habitual stop was clearly a stop even to a casual observer.

Mr IGH

It's this kind of crap that makes people anti-cop. This was a way to make money and harrass bikers, what else would you expect from Sheriff Pusser and his minions?

dougmc

That's a good point, and a good argument for fighting the ticket -- `I thought he was there to direct us through the intersection'.

Though to be fair, if he's directing traffic he's usually making appropriate hand gestures and probably in the middle of the intersection. If he's sitting in his car or writing up another cyclist, that suggests that he's not directing traffic. I guess he could direct traffic from the corner, but it ought to be very clear. If he's just watching you and not making `stop' or `go through' motions, he's probably not directing traffic.

Did the ride organizers make it clear that traffic laws were still in full effect? I'd argue that one should assume that unless told otherwise, but my guess is that their lawyers told them to explicitly include that in the paperwork the participants were given.

noisebeam

I've done MS rides and we were told nothing (except perhaps in fine print) about any exception or enforcement of traffic law at the ride start. Some intersections had police standing nearby, not actively directing traffic at the time I rode thru, but there perhaps to direct it if needed. I just followed everyone else thru the intersections without much slowing and definitely no stopping.

Paul Barnard

I was in maritime LE. I handed out a pile of tickets. Never for anthing I felt like was petty though. On some of the more serious offenses I abstained from writing a ticket when I felt like the educational message I was delivering was being well received. My primary goal in enforcement was education and prevention. Punitive action was a last resort. I won over quite a few people with my polite, concerned and understanding nature. Many of the people I won over went on to help me at some point down the road. So many cops have an us vs them mentality and that is wholy unhealthy and counterproductive. When I gain public confidence and cooperation I can accomplish exponentially more!

I wrote a guy a ticket for poaching 1000+ pounds of red snapper. It was a HEAVY fine. As I was talking to him wrapping things up, he said I know you are just doing your job. I said, "no James it's more than that. I believe very deeply in what I am doing. I don't think the resource can handle the legal pressure it is under now, let alone illegal activities. "

He paused for a moment and said "you know, I respect that." He went on to become a pretty good informant for me. I could go down to the dock any time and enjoy coffee and conversation. He knew I would light him up again if I needed to.

I could tell many more stories about the people I opted not to cite and how that ultimately served a greater good.

Commando303

I don't think it's wrong to ticket cyclists for zipping past stop-signs, and I don't really care that they zipped while "raising money for charity." Apparently, these folk were informed the rules of the road would be in effect (i.e., they would not be riding in some closed circuit), and they chose to do that for which they were fined. But, hey, they were trying to kill of M.S., right — so, it's OK... No, it isn't.

Daily Commute

The explanation of the cop sounds mostly reasonable--eight total riders ticketed, all of whom supposedly blew the sign without slowing. We cyclists need to pick our battles, and defending scofflaws from tickets for failing to stop at stop signs could hurt us with other efforts.

cc_rider

Update thanks to a local yahoo bike forum https://groups.yahoo.com/group/BikeWashingtonDC/

Some of the ticketed cyclists went to court this week. Here's the link to what happened.
https://theathleteslawyer.com/cases/l...y/#comment-454