Are Tampa police violating civil rights law with bicycle stops?

[tru_m.a.c]

Tampa City Council Chairman Frank Reddikk called Monday for an investigation into whether the Tampa Police Department is violating civil rights law with its long-standing practice of targeting poor, black neighborhoods for bicycle tickets.

Reddikk said he wants police Chief Jane Castor and Mayor Bob Buckhorn to publicly answer questions about how officers are handing out tickets.

Reddikk's call was in response to a Tampa Bay Times report on Sunday that revealed police have been using bicycle law as an excuse to stop, question and search riders in high-crime neighborhoods.

As a result, black residents have gotten 79 percent of all tickets written, even though they make up only a quarter of the population.

"First, I want to get to the bottom of it," Reddikk said. "Why are they targeting certain African-American communities? The only one that can tell me that is the chief of police.

"I think the report is very embarrassing for the city," Reddikk said. "It's very embarrassing to the African-American community, and I'm very embarrassed by it."

Two legal experts contacted by the Times say the disparity in bike tickets is strong evidence of a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids practices that have a disproportionate impact on minorities.

"This is affecting minority individuals almost exclusively," said Sam Brooke, deputy legal director of the Economic Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The question is why? Why are you doing that? There's got to be a good reason."

Brooke and other experts said police don't have to have a racist intent for there to be a violation.

In addition, it's not enough to argue that such police tactics are curbing crime, the experts said.

"The major thing they're going to claim is they're conducting this because it's a high-crime area," said Judith Scully, a law professor at Stetson University. "But police departments very cavalierly refer to high-crime areas as an excuse for all sort of behavior."

It would be up to the Justice Department to investigate and determine if there is a civil rights violation.

The most likely review would come under Title VI, which applies to any agency that gets federal funds. Those agencies stand to lose their federal dollars if they are found in violation.

Often agencies settle with the Justice Department and agree to reforms.

Justice Department officials have not responded to calls for comment.

Chief Castor has defended her officers' use of bike stops in high-crime neighborhoods.

"Many individuals receiving bike citations are involved in criminal activity," she said. "We have an obligation to address the individual issues that plague each neighborhood."

On Monday, she downplayed concerns. "The Tampa Police Department's bike enforcement is based on violations of state statute," Castor wrote in a statement.

Also on Monday, officials with the American Civil Liberties Union said they were conducting an analysis of data used in the Times' investigation to determine whether or not they will file a lawsuit.

"Racial disparities of this magnitude are extremely disturbing," said Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, staff attorney with ACLU's Racial Justice Program. "They're suggestive of racial profiling and the targeting of black people not because of what they've done or evidence of wrongdoing but because of how they look and how they're perceived."

Both the mayor's office and the public defender's office said they too are reviewing the data on bike tickets.

Public Defender Julianne ****, who has long had concerns about the way bike law is used to arrest juveniles for other crimes, said she plans to meet with the city's new police chief when one is appointed.

Castor retires next month.

Mayor Buckhorn has not commented on the Times' findings.

The Times found that the Tampa Police Department issues more bike tickets than any other agency in Florida, for offenses including riding at night with no light and carrying a rider on the handlebars. Some riders have been stopped more than a dozen times through the years; some have been ticketed three times in one day.

The Times' investigation found that officers are encouraged to aggressively enforce bike violations to make contact with "potential criminals" and root out greater offenses. One 2007 initiative was titled "Bicycle Blitzkrieg."

Council member Mike Suarez said he was disturbed by the account of a man whose bike was taken away because he could not produce a receipt.

He said he backs the department's proactive approach to attacking small crimes before they balloon into something bigger, but thinks police may need more training.

Council member Lisa Montelione said she worries the department is undermining relationships in the same neighborhoods in which detectives need the public's help in solving a recent spate of shootings.

"The disparity is something that I'm ashamed of," Montelione said. "I don't like to think that this is what we're calling community policing. When judges start seeing patterns and are chastising police officers, you've got a problem. You've got to build relationships with the community," she said.

"This is not the way."

http://www.tampabay.com/news/public...g-civil-rights-law-with-bicycle-stops/2226334

 

[tru_m.a.c]

In response to Tampa Bay Times' interview requests about bicycle tickets, Police Chief Jane Castor provided the following statement on April 10:

Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor [TPD photo]

Officers write the most bike warnings and citations in the areas of the city where they recover the largest number of stolen bikes. This is not a coincidence. Many individuals receiving bike citations are involved in criminal activity. At one time, suspects stole cars to commit crimes. Officers have reduced auto theft over 90% so bikes have become the most common mode of transportation for criminals. We have a duty to address that reality for the safety of our citizens. Those citizens have a right to a safe neighborhood.

Seventy-six percent of our DUI arrests last year were a "disproportionate" number of white males. That does not mean we are targeting white males, it simply means that we are addressing a crime pattern, not a demographic. If those drivers weren't driving impaired, they would not be stopped. The same applies to bicyclists. If they are riding within the guidelines of the law, they will not be cited.

Every neighborhood has a unique set of issues. What is a problem in one area of the city may not be in another. We have an obligation to address the individual issues that plague each neighborhood.

Florida is one of the leaders in bicycle and pedestrian fatalities and Tampa is not immune to that. Our goal is to make the roads safer for everyone. That's why we take a strong education and enforcement stance. We have handed out over 1,600 free bike lights, with heavy concentration in the neighborhoods where the most citations are issued. Bicyclists are typically given warnings before citations, many multiple warnings.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/public...ief-jane-castor-about-bicycle-tickets/2225980

 

[tru_m.a.c]

http://www.tampabay.com/news/public...rouble-with-the-cops---if-youre-black/2225966

If the tickets are any indication, Tampa residents must be the lousiest bicyclists in Florida.

They don't use lights at night. Don't ride close enough to the curb. Can't manage to keep their hands on the handlebars.

In the past three years, Tampa police have written 2,504 bike tickets — more than Jacksonville, Miami, St. Petersburg and Orlando combined.

Police say they are gung ho about bike safety and focused on stopping a plague of bike thefts.

But here's something they don't mention about the people they ticket:

Eight out of 10 are black.

A Tampa Bay Times investigation has found that Tampa police are targeting poor, black neighborhoods with obscure subsections of a Florida statute that outlaws things most people have tried on a bike, like riding with no light or carrying a friend on the handlebars.

Officers use these minor violations as an excuse to stop, question and search almost anyone on wheels. The department doesn't just condone these stops, it encourages them, pushing officers who patrol high-crime neighborhoods to do as many as possible.

There was the 56-year-old man who rode his bike through a stop sign while pulling a lawnmower. Police handcuffed him while verifying he had, indeed, borrowed the mower from a friend.

There was the 54-year-old man whose bike was confiscated because he couldn't produce a receipt to prove it was his.

One woman was walking her bike home after cooking for an elderly neighbor. She said she was balancing a plate of fish and grits in one hand when an officer flagged her down and issued her a $51 ticket for not having a light. With late fees, it has since ballooned to $90. She doesn't have the money to pay.

The Times analyzed more than 10,000 bicycle tickets Tampa police issued in the past dozen years. The newspaper found that even though blacks make up about a quarter of the city's population, they received 79 percent of the bike tickets.

Some riders have been stopped more than a dozen times through the years, and issued as many as 17 tickets. Some have been ticketed three times in one day.

It's possible blacks in some areas use bicycles more than whites. But that's not what's driving the disparity.

Police are targeting certain high-crime neighborhoods and nitpicking cyclists as a way to curb crime. They hope they will catch someone with a stolen bike or with drugs or that they will scare thieves away.

"This is not a coincidence," said Police Chief Jane Castor. "Many individuals receiving bike citations are involved in criminal activity."

She said her department has done such a good job curbing auto theft that bikes have "become the most common mode of transportation for criminals."

Many of the tickets did go to convicted criminals, including some people interviewed for this story. And there are cases where police stopped someone under suspicious circumstances and found a gun or caught a burglar.

But most bike stops that led to a ticket turned up no illegal activity; only 20 percent of adults ticketed last year were arrested.

When police did arrest someone, it was almost always for a small amount of drugs or a misdemeanor like trespassing.

One man went to jail for refusing to sign a ticket.

On Davis Islands, where Mayor Bob Buckhorn lives near baseball star Derek Jeter, police could issue multiple tickets. But they don't. One recent night, the Times observed a couple leaving an ice cream shop on unlit beach cruisers and a cyclist riding along the dark coastline, visible only because of the reflectors on his pedals.

Only one ticket was written last year on Davis Islands. It went to a black man.

The same goes for Bayshore Boulevard, another of the city's main biking destinations. Only one person got a ticket there last year. He, too, is black.

"Each neighborhood has a unique set of issues," Castor said. "What is a problem in one area of the city may not be in another. We have an obligation to address the individual issues that plague each neighborhood."

For weeks, the Times asked Castor for an interview. But the police chief declined, instead providing written statements.

Mayor Buckhorn also declined comment, saying Castor's statement "speaks for itself."

The Times' findings concern others — Hillsborough Circuit judges and the Public Defender, social rights advocates and some of the leading researchers in race and policing.

"You almost roll your eyes when you read the reports," said Circuit Judge Tracy Sheehan. "Oh no, another bike stop, another kid riding on the handlebars, here we go. And certainly, we have laws and we should all follow the law, but it occurred to me the stops were all occurring in certain neighborhoods and with certain children, and not in my neighborhood, and not with the white kids."

Joyce Hamilton Henry, Director of Advocacy for ACLU of Florida, wants to know: "If it's not racial profiling, what is it?"

 

[tru_m.a.c]

When first asked about the bicycle tickets, Tampa police directed inquiries to Capt. Ruben Delgado, who provided reporters with a strategy created a few years ago to encourage cyclists to register their bikes so officers could identify them if they were stolen.

He denied bicycle law was being used primarily to root out drugs or fight crime unrelated to bikes.

"We want to see the thefts of bicycles go down. We want to see the safety get better so there are less crashes," he said. "Whether it leads to something else or not is going to be secondary."

He said when officers find people in violation of bike law, they hand out lights and give warnings. Tickets, he said, are a last resort.

But the Times found that the department has ticketed hundreds of black bicyclists each year for more than a decade.

The racial breakdown of the tickets suggests police are using their discretion differently when it comes to bikes. For more serious driving offenses, blacks were not more likely to be cited. For failing to stop at a red light in 2014, blacks got only 11 percent of tickets. Bike tickets that year, 81 percent.

Internal police department records show a sustained effort to encourage bike stops as a means to reduce more serious crimes.

Officers get yearly "productivity reports," calculating, in part, how many tickets they give. One personnel file detailed a "red grid patrol" in which officers are encouraged to "engage and identify offenders through street checks, bike stops and traffic stops."

In another file, a supervisor told a new officer he should learn rarely used traffic statutes. The fact that he wasn't familiar with them was noted as a "significant weakness" in his 2012 performance review. The next year, the new officer impressed his bosses with his "dramatic increase" in "self-initiated activity."

He wrote 111 bike tickets, the most in the department. All but four of the cyclists were black.

Bike tickets got special attention in 2007 when a squad set out on a mission dubbed "Bicycle Blitzkrieg."

The goal, according to a department memo, was "to aggressively enforce bicycle infractions … where there has been increased criminal activity."

Stopping people on bikes, especially at night, would introduce officers to "potential criminals, thus opening more avenues to make arrests and clear the streets of the subjects that are committing the crimes."

During the three-month blitz, officers arrested dozens and issued 266 citations and the squad was given an award lauding its "significant impact in reducing crime."

For the past three years, no law enforcement agency in the state has given as many bicycle tickets as the Tampa Police Department. It is responsible for 12 percent of all bike tickets written in Florida.

Last year, Tampa police wrote at least four tickets for something no longer illegal: riding a bike without holding the handlebars.

Former Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, remembers submitting the violation for repeal back in 2012, when legislators were encouraged to weed out archaic and obsolete laws.

This one fit the bill.

"It was against the law," she said. "I mean, really? … As a kid, I used to ride without my hands all the time."

 

[tru_m.a.c]

For many who live just west of downtown, in the blocks surrounding the city's oldest, ugliest public housing complex, the world is only as large as the distance they can ride their bicycles. Residents pedal to work, to school, to pick up dinner and to attend church.

It isn't hard to find people who have been stopped by police and issued tickets: The kid riding home from football practice, the guy detailing cars. They were cited last year along with dozens of their neighbors.

Then there was Alphonso Lee King, ordered to remove a bag of food and a lock from his bicycle so an officer could confiscate it "due to the fact the bicycle is worth over $500," the officer wrote, "and King was not able to produce any type of documentation that he bought the bike legally."

King said he and his brother, a scrapper, found the bike frame in a Dumpster and assembled it from parts. The bike was the only way he could get around after getting out of prison last summer for dealing drugs.

Tampa police impounded it for 90 days, advertising it as "found" property, even though it had not been reported stolen.

These types of stops also happen in other low-income, high-crime, predominantly black pockets, including Sulphur Springs and parts of East Tampa.

In Tampa Heights, police stopped 63-year-old Lloyd Brown for not having lights on his bike — except he did, and they almost immediately acknowledged that. "Well, I'm glad to see you're in compliance today, sir," an officer said as a dashboard camera recorded.

But the 2013encounter didn't end there. The officer kept Brown's identification and questioned him about what he'd bought at the grocery store.

The interrogation escalated to whether he used drugs, and a search revealed a small amount of crack.

"Let me explain something to you, okay?" the officer said. "If you do anything dumb, your head will hit this ground very hard, okay? And you will go to the hospital before you go to jail."

The felony charge, pleaded down to a misdemeanor, impeded Brown's ability to get an apartment, forcing him to move in with relatives.

Brown was shuttling from one home to another one morning a few weeks ago in North Tampa, towing all of his belongings on his bike, when another officer stopped him for riding in the middle of the street.

The officer checked his identification and flipped his bike to look at the serial number. It bore a sticker: God's Pedal Power Ministry. "I got it from a church!" Brown said.

The officer sent him on his way.

 

[tru_m.a.c]

The scenario has become cliche in these parts, where kids as young as 12 describe the same dance grown men recall from growing up in Tampa.

"It's always the light, or to run your VIN number," said 31-year-old Anthony Gilbert of College Hill. " 'Let's have your ID. Just stand in front of my cruiser.' Now, you're being humiliated. Your friend's riding by. Your reverend might be riding by. Now, you've got to go to church. The pastor's going to be like, 'What happened, son?' "

Last year, officers stopped a man in Belmont Heights after he ran a stop sign on an unlit bike. They searched 33-year-old Artis Hancock, and when he tried to flee, a scuffle ensued. Hancock wound up on the ground as an officer punched, kicked and choked him to unconsciousness.

The officer said Hancock reached for his Taser. A public defender later argued the search was illegal and that Hancock's charges, including drug possession, should be dismissed.

In Hillsborough Circuit Court, Judge Samantha Ward listened to the officers try to justify their suspicion that Hancock may have had a weapon on him, which they said prompted them to search Hancock without consent.

"He was in a high-crime area," said one officer.

"He had large clothing," said another.

Before she dismissed all of Hancock's criminal charges, Ward quipped:

"Was he black, too?"

 

[tru_m.a.c]

Tampa officers' emphasis on bike stops is a logical extension of the department's crime fighting philosophy.

Like many cities across the nation, Tampa for years has embraced "proactive" policing.

Instead of waiting to respond to 911 calls, officers now look for ways to initiate contact with potential lawbreakers and head off crime before it happens.

Agencies across the country, including Tampa, credit the approach for a steep decrease in crime.

Earlier this year, Castor spoke in Washington in front of President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

She emphasized the importance of building trust in high crime neighborhoods.

"Every encounter with an officer is an opportunity to build a positive partnership in the community. It creates trust that must be the foundation of our relationship with our citizens," she said.

"I always remind them to never lose sight of the power they have in their badges, the power to not only take away someone's freedom, but possibly their life. This power must be used wisely and only when necessary."

Experts say the trust Castor references is not helped when communities feel they are being targeted by practices like Tampa's bike citation efforts. Police departments can — and have — gotten in trouble when proactive policing leads to racially lopsided enforcement of the law.

A federal judge in 2013 declared New York's "stop and frisk" program unconstitutional and ordered reforms.

And this year, the U.S. Justice Department declared illegal certain biased tactics used by police in Ferguson, Mo., where 18-year-old Michael Brown, shot dead by an officer, was initially stopped for walking in the middle of the street.

In their investigation, officials highlighted the percentage of citations police wrote to blacks in Ferguson. They got 90 percent of tickets even though they make up only 67 percent of the population.

When it comes to bike tickets, Tampa's disparity is even more extreme.

In her written statement, Castor said the high number of tickets written to black cyclists in Tampa had nothing to do with their race.

As evidence, she cited the racial breakdown of people arrested in Tampa for driving drunk. Last year, 76 percent of them were white men.

"That does not mean we are targeting white males, it simply means that we are addressing a crime pattern," Castor wrote. "If those drivers weren't driving impaired, they would not be stopped. The same applies to bicyclists."

Sam Brooke, Deputy Legal Director of the Economic Justice Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Times' findings reminded him of both Ferguson and "stop and frisk."

"If we authorize police to stop everyone walking down the street at all times, they would, of course, find people violating the law," Brooke said. "The question is, if we, as a society, should be tolerating that."

Bike stops have led to enough arrests that some Hillsborough County judges have begun to notice the racial disparity.

Typical of their defendants is 14-year-old Antonio Barnes, who sped home past the broken windows of Belmont Heights a couple of years ago, hoping to return borrowed headphones to a relative before the last bus of the night. He pedalled his unlit bike as fast as he could until he felt the spotlight of a police cruiser.

"I was so scared," he remembers. He had a small amount of marijuana in his pocket.

Almost instantly, the cops were out of their cruiser, ordering him to get off the bike, get his hand out of his pocket, tell them his name. Antonio couldn't even remember that. He was out of breath, soaked in sweat, staring at the light like a deer in traffic.

Did he have anything illegal on him they asked?

He told the truth and went to jail.

Circuit Judge Rex Barbas ultimately dismissed the case because officers didn't read Antonio his rights before questioning him. Most often, though, the cases stick, because officers can stop people for one reason even if they have another.

"It's legal," Barbas said. "But unfair."

Barbas spent three years hearing juvenile cases. He couldn't remember a single white kid arrested after a bike stop.

"We'd like to think we can all go about our lives without intrusion, without anybody looking in our pockets," said Judge Sheehan. "If we're all going to take a hard approach on bike riding without lights, then let's do it across the city and across the county."

Even if a stop amounts to no more than a bike ticket, it can still have lasting consequences.

Children as young as 11 have been ticketed and reported to collection agencies, the Timesfound.

The consequences worsen when they begin to drive.

Eric Davis, who grew up in one of the zones patrolled by the Bicycle Blitzkrieg squad, racked up 13 bike tickets as a teen.

The unpaid tickets triggered a driver's license suspension, which landed Davis in jail when he was caught behind the wheel of a car. Now 23, he has been deemed a "habitual traffic offender," even though he never got a single ticket for bad driving.

Davis said he didn't understand the implications when he got his first ticket at 15. "I didn't know it would go to my license," he said. "It's just nasty, man."

Despite the thousands of hours spent by police, court clerks, public defenders, prosecutors and judges on enforcement of bicycle laws, it's hard to tell what Tampa gets out of them.

Even though 2013 was one of the department's highest ticketing years, bike crashes still rose the following year by 20 percent. Bike thefts, too, climbed 15 percent.

Ticketed bicyclists are being arrested mostly for small drug busts or for misdemeanor charges that stem from their interaction with police during the stop, the Times found.

Castor said many people guilty of serious crimes are not issued a bike ticket during a stop. For that reason, the Times' analysis would not capture them.

"We continue to believe that our enforcement practices have reduced crime in Tampa," Castor said.

Time will tell if it works for Raymond Contreras.

In 2013, two officers spotted the 53-year-old as he rode his bicycle through a stop sign on a residential street. He was an easy arrest.

The previous year, the same two officers had stopped him on his bike and found cocaine under the rim of his hat. He did a week in jail and walked away from the courthouse owing just court costs.

Now here he was again, riding a bike, wearing a hat.

Another piece of crack, another felony case. After five months of court hearings and a seven-page motion to suppress by his public defender, Contreras walked away with a down-pleaded misdemeanor and more court costs.

Since 2008, Tampa police officers have ticketed Contreras 17 times for bicycle offenses from riding a bike without a light to riding more than "two abreast." Chief Castor said he's been stopped other times and issued only warnings.

Sometimes, they find a personal stash of drugs, sometimes they don't. He owes more than $1,000 in bike tickets and another $1,000 in court costs.

No one has collected a dime.

 

[88m3]

They do it to whites all the time in NYC or so I see them complain on the gothamist.

bicycles are a real problem in NYC, imo and should be punished and pursued much more.

Are they targeting for them being poor or Black in Florida? Most likely.

 

[tmonster]

the unseen shyt that black people are dealing with in this country...
meanwhile

 

[DaPresident]

Then they wanna tell me that "I need to get over racism?" That we live in a "Post Racial society"


That I'm being RACIST for pointing stuff like this out? and it's NOT hard to see why I ain't really feeling white folks...my experiences have been horrible with them smh