Seeing as encounters with law enforcement are probably more deadly on average than jaywalking - I wholly support this change. Being poor in a car city is something most folks in the circles I run in now have never experienced or thought about. The documentary “Los Angeles Plays Itself” has a fantastic section about this.
Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
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Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
#12“encounters with the police, especially for people of color.” Huh? How is enforcing people not dart out into streets and hit by cars racist or biased?
It’s a minor crime which people of color tend to be disproportionately cited for.
Isn’t the real causation here that they’re lower class? I would imagine high-class blacks don’t often get ticketed for jaywalking.
Lower-class people tend to walk more for reasons related to expensive car maintenance. Are blacks more often lower-class? Sure, but that’s a different issue entirely.
Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume because of selective enforcement. The more that we make normal everyday events technically illegal, the more likely the police will have to pick and choose what they enforce and what they let slide. Then you have ample opportunity for that discretion to be applied in a discriminatory way.
Sure, but why make a specific point about that with jaywalking? Can't that argument be made for just about any crime? Just seems like a useless red herring to make it about race when it doesn't need to be; it's a related but separate issue to whether jaywalking should be a crime in the first place.
I think "is this something that often reinforces racial discrepancies" is a useful thing to know when evaluating should it be a crime in the first place. I think it's another point in the "con" column of having harsher treatment for it.
Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
#14This is what I get from France:
> This site not available in your country
I wonder what makes that website so special it can’t comply with GDPR.
Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
#15Can someone paste the content, I get "this site is not available in your country"?
Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume because of selective enforcement. The more that we make normal everyday events technically illegal, the more likely the police will have to pick and choose what they enforce and what they let slide. Then you have ample opportunity for that discretion to be applied in a discriminatory way.
Sure, but why make a specific point about that with jaywalking? Can't that argument be made for just about any crime? Just seems like a useless red herring to make it about race when it doesn't need to be; it's a related but separate issue to whether jaywalking should be a crime in the first place.
Because jaywalking is very frequently used by police to target communities of color. As an example, 90% of the jaywalking citations given in NYC in 2019 were issued to people of color.
Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
#17“encounters with the police, especially for people of color.” Huh? How is enforcing people not dart out into streets and hit by cars racist or biased?
Same reason enforcing random pat-downs for illicit substances, or traffic stops for speeding, racist or biased. Because the people enforcing it are biased, and often racist.
That's exactly why it's phrased as reducing encounters with police, because police encounters are disproportionately negative (or hostile) for people of color. Has nothing to do with the actual infraction.
Of course, you'd know this if you'd paid any attention to the news, considering it's currently the third most major political issue US.
Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
#18“encounters with the police, especially for people of color.” Huh? How is enforcing people not dart out into streets and hit by cars racist or biased?
It’s a minor crime which people of color tend to be disproportionately cited for.
First off, you don’t really know if jaywalking is proportionally distributed across all races to say people of color are disproportionately targeted. Healthy higher net worth individuals are less likely to jaywalk. Lower income and poorly educated individuals, which often are minorities, are more likely to risk their life through jaywalking daily, and thus raise their chances of being cited.
Edit: To the downvoters, think before you fire off that digital middle finger.
Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
#19This is what I get from France: > This site not available in your country I wonder what makes that website so special it can’t comply with GDPR.
I wonder what makes Europe so special it can demand companies outside of Europe comply with European law.
Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime
#20Seeing as encounters with law enforcement are probably more deadly on average than jaywalking - I wholly support this change. Being poor in a car city is something most folks in the circles I run in now have never experienced or thought about. The documentary “Los Angeles Plays Itself” has a fantastic section about this.
> Seeing as encounters with law enforcement are probably more deadly on average than jaywalking
There are far more instances of jaywalking than police interactions, and yet pedestrian deaths are 6x higher than deaths from police. So no that is not true in any way, especially when you account for armed vs unarmed police shootings (~25 unarmed black people were shot and killed by police in 2019, where unarmed includes fake guns).