How to Avoid Tickets for Jaywalking

Byline: Barbara Osborn

Does anyone actually get tickets for throwing out cigarette butts and jaywalking? The answer turns out to be yes -- if you're homeless and live downtown. Our friends at Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles published a strong piece on L.A.'s Safer Cities Initiative written by staff at Liberty Hill grantee, L.A.CAN. Find it below:

"The Safer City Initiative (SCI) is a critical component of our strategy to reduce homelessness in this City. We will be targeting the drug dealers and other criminals that prey on the homeless to reverse the culture of lawlessness on Skid Row, while leading those who need help to housing and services." Shortly after this statement, made by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on September 24, 2006, L.A.’s Skid Row became home to the largest concentration of police officers in the country.

Since its inception five years ago, the SCI has ushered in an era of policing unseen before in Los Angeles - one that brought 50 additional uniformed officers and up to 60 undercover agents to an area smaller than one square-mile. According to its creators, Villaraigosa and then-Police Chief William Bratton, SCI was to use a two-pronged approach of increased policing and social services that would result in a significant reduction in crime and homelessness in the community. It would also implement a "broken windows" strategy of crime reduction, which maintains that a reduction in "visible signs of disorder" - such as broken windows, trash on the streets, or jaywalking - eventually leads to a decrease in drug dealing, homicides, and other forms of serious crime. Unfortunately, this theory has never been proven as an effective means of crime or poverty reduction. And what followed was a particularly aggressive and brutal system of mass arrests, citations, and harassment. 

According to data gathered by UCLA Law Professor Gary Blasi, in the first two years of SCI alone, LAPD made over 19,000 arrests and issued roughly 24,000 citations.

This is in a community with a population of approximately 12,000 - 15,000 residents. This amount of ticketing and arrests was unique to Skid Row, and represented a level unlike any other in Los Angeles. In fact, a 2007 UCLA study found that the number of citations issued in the first year of SCI came at a rate up to 69 times higher than those found in other parts of a city already notorious for intense police activity. As if this was not bad enough, a disturbing pattern of bias policing began to surface.

Homeless and low-income residents, predominately black and brown, realized that while they were being stopped for jaywalking, tossing a cigarette butt on the ground, crossing against a red light, or having an open container, newer, wealthier, and whiter residents were not being stopped for the same violations.These types of violations came with-if not arrest and jail time-financial penalties of at least $159 - $191. This left those cited, many of whom live off fixed incomes between $221 and $850 a month, often unable to pay monetary penalties. This in turn resulted in a fine increase (up to $600), a suspended license, and/or a warrant for arrest. For many, it also led to a loss of benefits, housing, jobs, and services.To help address the urgent issue, LA CAN, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA), and other pro bono legal partners began to provide representation for infraction citations as part of a weekly free legal clinic. Since 2008, LAFLA and Public Counsel have worked together to coordinate and grow the volunteer attorney and law firm support for this clinic.

What was learned was that the impacts of SCI went far beyond just citations. Reports of various forms of police misconduct - harassment, arbitrary stops, unwarranted searches, illegal property seizure and destruction - began to pour in from residents.There were also multiple accounts of physically-disabled residents receiving crosswalk violation citations as a result of their inability to cross an intersection in sufficient time due to their use of wheelchairs, walkers, and canes. In 2009, of the over 600 tickets handled by the legal clinic, 90 percent were for crosswalk violations and jaywalking. Among those that reported their disability status, 60 percent were people with disabilities. But the story of SCI has not simply been one of injustice, displacement, and civil rights violations.

Over the past 5 years, local residents have built a resistance and movement that is bent on changing the culture of criminalization that LAPD has created and, ultimately, eliminating the Safer Cities Initiative. What started with meetings, testimonials, and protest signs has led to a multi-cultural, community-wide effort that combines, amongst other tools, organizing, police monitoring, community research and lawyering, documentary film-making, Know Your Rights trainings, policy advocacy, and leadership development.

While SCI remains an oppressive and racist program that must come to an end, Skid Row residents and their allies have organized resistance to the policy and have achieved some victories for the community. After residents helped gather declarations and video evidence, in the Spring of 2007 a federal judge found that some of LAPD’s search policies were unconstitutional, and they were ordered to stop those, reducing the number of detentions with searches in the community .Community Watch teams of trained community residents monitor the police department on a daily basis, reducing the likelihood of civil rights violations when the cameras are running and also at times providing video evidence to exonerate people facing unjust criminal charges.After months of public testimony and other advocacy, as well as recruiting attorneys to represent people with infraction citations, in 2010 the citations issued in Skid Row were finally reduced by 46 percent of their highest point and more than 2,500 citations were resolved in LA CAN’s legal clinic, avoiding high fees and other penalties for those residents.

After residents helped gather declarations and evidence, in the Spring of 2011 a federal judge ruled that the City was illegally confiscating homeless people’s property and a temporary restraining order was issued to stop those practices, protecting residents from losing their belongings.After much testimony by residents and allies, in 2011 the Housing Authority reduced the "ban" times for those with criminal charges so now residents that have been unfairly targeted by SCI policing will not be prohibited for long periods of time from obtaining much-needed affordable housing. Although SCI was initially going to be a nine-month program designed to remove poor and homeless people from downtown LA, many residents have resisted and exercised their right to remain in the community - they thought folks would go without a fight, but as the protest signs still say, "We’re Still Here!"

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