I certainly don’t think any city is making any worthwhile amount of money on traffic tickets for bikes. I also doubt anything happening anywhere in CA happens on the same scale as NYC. But cities do sometimes decide to be buttheads. Maybe sometimes justifiable. There was Carlsbad that had a panic attack about e-bikes a few months ago.
We also have the most homeless here in CA and bikes are part of the profile. Maybe they used the traffic offense to pull you and when it turned out you were inoffensive they thought they had to make it look worthwhile. You watch cop reality shows and cops are nonstop pulling over sleazy looking people on thin premises to run their ID for missed court date warrants and search them for tiny bits of drugs
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Genesis 49:16-17