DWB 0
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.
There’s more.
Hell, I bought my bike eight or nine years ago with cash from a small non-profit that restores bikes for poor kids. I don’t have any idea where the receipt is, if indeed there was a receipt.
The cops are trying to defend this as a war against crime, as if bicycle violations are some sort of “gateway crime.”
Yeah. Right.