The all-time jaywalking story

March 17, 6:20 PMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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City councilcrats long ago decided that common citizens are just too danged dumb to walk across a street without their explicit expert assistance.

They paint white lines at the intersections of streets, which is fine, then tell us we must walk between them. Apparently, they think dried paint will protect us from being creamed by cars.

Or they don’t paint lines at intersections, which is also fine, but still tell us to cross only at the corners.

So if you are in the middle of a city block and your destination is directly across the street and there is utterly entirely totally completely absolutely no traffic on the street you must still walk all the way to the corner, wait for a green light, cross the street, and walk all the way back to the middle of the block again, because you’re a mere “citizen” and you can’t be trusted to look both ways before crossing the street in the middle of the block.

They even wrote laws about it. They call non-approved non-legal non-standard street-crossing “jaywalking.”

The jay in jaywalking, by the way, comes from an old snotty putdown that meant rube or hick or country bumpkin. (Isn’t that “hate speech” in modern parlance?) But it perfectly sums up what our elected servants think of us.

Jaywalking is one of those activities that ought to be nothing more than a general social agreement, not a law. If you cross a street full of moving cars and you suffer a smackdown it’s your own fault. If you cross at a place where drivers expect to see people crossing and you get bumper-thumped it’s the driver’s fault. Fair and simple.

But if you’re intelligent enough to look for traffic wherever you cross and you make the crossing without incident it should be nobody’s business. With freedom comes responsibility, and vice-versa.

But our elected authoritarians, those same people who were playground bullies and hallway monitors and teachers’ snitches when you were a kid, won’t let it go. They just have to impose their will no matter how trifling. Puny minds need puny powers.

As you would guess, the act of turning simple social conventions into utterly unnecessary laws often results in idiotic outcomes.

A recent AP article reports that a Denver bus driver and another man were helping two old women (PC Alert: a pair mature ladies) across a street in a blizzard when a truck struck and seriously injured the bus driver, but only after he pushed the others out of harm’s way.

For his unsolicited good deed the busman was rewarded with bleeding in the brain, broken bones, a dislocated shoulder, a possible ruptured spleen and a jaywalking ticket from the Colorado State Patrol.

Absurd in its own right, that recent event serves as mere buildup for …

The All-Time Classic Jaywalking Enforcement Story
 

 
Question: How many Atlanta lawmen does it take to subdue one spindly history
professor? Answer: Seven uniforms and one fat guy in a suit. (AP Photo/
History News Network, Jonathan Dresner)

In 2007, a mild-mannered historian slash Tufts University professor slash former Oxford Don, attending a convention with other mild-mannered historians in Atlanta, decided to do what the apocryphal chicken did – cross the road to get to the other side.

A cop in a bomber jacket yelled something about jaywalking. Neither understanding the yelling nor recognizing a bomber jacket as a bona fide police uniform, the prof continued his chicken walk.

On the other side he was confronted by the bomber jacket guy. Words were exchanged, pushing and shoving ensued, backup was called and the prof was knocked to the ground and forcefully pressed against the pavement while having his hands cuffed behind his back. He was charged with disorderly conduct and clapped in the clink for having committed the crime of harming no one.

What wins this the all-time jaywalking enforcement trophy is the cell phone photo provided to the AP by History News Network depicting the gross overreaction by the local fuzz. Seven cops? Crime scene tape? For jaywalking? Did CSI Atlanta show up to take shoeprint measurements and swab the academic for alleles?

The next time you see Protect and Serve painted on a patrol car think Bully and Boss instead.

Jaywalking itself is not so much a problem as a symptom. Some people think we are “heading toward” a police state. If it isn’t here already the requisite arrogant attitude for one has long since been burned into the brain cells of our law enforcers.

In our so-called free society we are criminalized to death. Before we know it, a jaywalking ticket will require us to register as Convicted Jaywalkers, prevent us from living within five hundred feet of a school, and become legal grounds for denying us a concealed carry permit for our handguns.

City civil snivelers need to get a life.

(If you have a jaywalker whopper send a link to the original article to libergarryan at aol dot com.)