The Tampa Bay Times analysis of an aggressive Tampa Police Department policy that has led to a disproportionate amount of African Americans getting cited for minor bicycle-related infractions has brought national attention to the department, and most of that attention comes in the form of scorn.
Among the latest sources of said scorn: the American Civil Liberties Union, which has called for the practice to just effing stop.
"Suspend that program immediately," Joyce Hamilton Henry, the ACLU of Florida's director of advocacy, said in a written statement, according to the Times. "Until there is a thorough analysis of the impact of the program on the constitutional rights of the people of Tampa as well as the costs of the program, which includes community distrust and alienation from the police and the number of young black males who now needlessly have a criminal record, these citations must stop."
Probably to the chagrin of those who handle the department's P.R., the story has certainly been making waves.
Reporters Kameel Stanley and Alexandra Zayas found that nearly 80 percent of bicycle-related citations (riding at night without lights, blowing a stop sign) were being issued to African Americans. The story suggests that police, when they spotted cyclists with genetically inherited higher-than-average amounts of melanin, assumed that the bikes had been stolen. Some citation recipients were stuck with fines they couldn't pay, and wound up falling further and further into debt.
It's a sad, sad story of a police department reinforcing poverty and hopelessness through a racist policy.
Our favorite excerpt from the piece highlights some of the reporters' own anecdotal observations of people in more well-to-do parts of town who were melanin-challenged and (gasp!) not cited for lacking lights on their beach cruisers.
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.
All in all, the story was pretty damning, and Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor (who's retiring in a few weeks) has more or less defended the policy, though she did welcome a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into it.
That's nice, reads Tampa Bay Times editorial published Thursday, but maybe they ought to halt the practice now.
At the very least, perhaps a name change is in order?
The Times reports that the practice's formal title is "Bicycle Blitzkrieg."
We're assuming that it's not a reference to the Ramones song, but rather a nod to the war tactic carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II.
It's a term evocative of violence and horror, used as a moniker for an aggressive policing campaign. Hmmm.
This is why we have Google, guys.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2015.