In January, issues of "bike justice" came to the fore in Santa Cruz, CA. Two events briefly focussed the attention of city authorities on cyclists' issues and concerns.
The second event was unfortunately typical in the USA. On the afternoon of January 20th, an impatient motorist driving a light pickup truck had a "traffic tantrum". After honking and shouting, he backed his truck a foot or two, punched the throttle, and bulled through a crosswalk.
According to witnesses including a reporter from the local newspaper (Metro) the driver, Joe Gutierrez, struck and knocked down a cyclist (Shawn Duncan, UCSC employee) and then attempted to drive away. Outraged bystanders prevented his departure, surrounding the truck with cries of "citizen's arrest!" Mr. Duncan was shaken but unharmed; his bike, less fortunate, had been run over.
When police finally arrived they declined to interview several eyewitnesses, made only a cursory examination of the scene, and let the driver go without a citation. Mr Duncan is now challenging the police report, which apparently blames the cyclist.
This might be merely a small-town dispute over right of way, if it weren't for a documented national pattern of police bias in "traffic accident" reports when a cyclist (or a pedestrian) is struck by an automobile. It's common for police to show lenience to the motorist, or even to blame a cyclist or pedestrian -- even if the motorist was in violation of vehicle code.
The first event was much less spectacular. It might have passed almost unnoticed, if not for that second event which underscored its significance.
On Friday the 19th of January -- the day before Mr. Duncan very nearly became a hit-n-run casualty -- the City bicycle subcommittee was informed that the City Council would be voting on Tuesday the 23rd to approve a half-million-dollar grant proposal drafted by SCPD. The proposal, to the California OTS (Office of Traffic Safety), was for "bicycle and pedestrian safety enforcement." The subcommittee was asked by City staff to write a letter of support for the grant -- but they were not given access to its actual text.
Other bike and pedestrian advocates had never even heard of this grant proposal; as Rick Hyman wrote in email to the sc-bikes mailing list, "The County bike committee was never consulted, let alone informed." There was already some concern among local cyclists as of Friday night: what were the police up to? why was the grant process so secretive?
Given that a fair amount of the grant concept dealt with night-time enforcement and funding for a motorcycle and a sworn officer, there was some question as to what this had to do with bike and pedestrian incidents -- which mostly happen during the day. Were the cops using bike/ped safety as a stalking horse for a basic personnel increment?
But after the very unsatisfactory handling of the Gutierrez incident on Saturday, a much stronger feeling of "bad cop, no donut" was aroused among local cyclists. Why should our police be awarded an extra half million dollars for enforcing the law unfairly?
Everyone who cycles in Santa Cruz daily knows that we have far too many drivers who speed, violate crosswalks, and even bully and deliberately harass cyclists. We really cannot trust our drivers to drive properly. Many of them don't even know the vehicle code.
So most of us have at one time or another recited the old cliche' "there's never a cop around when I need one." "Road rage" incidents are by no means uncommon, and therefore local cyclists were angry about SCPD's lenient treatment of Gutierrez and the lack of sympathy or respect shown for the victim of his aggressive driving. It could have been any one of us who was knocked down, and who received a cursory and uncaring police response.
The feelings of the cycling community found expression at the City Council meeting Tuesday afternoon. Despite bad weather and an inconvenient meeting time, when the SCPD grant came up on the agenda, there were about ten local cyclists (including Shawn Duncan) signed up to speak. Various speakers had various takes on the situation, but in general, they seemed to want the grant proposal process suspended until two things happened: first, a complete investigation into the Gutierrez incident, and second, some consultation between the SCPD and local bike and pedestrian advocacy groups.
The City Council, however, had been put in a tough position. SCPD has come to them in November with a report which "proved" that Santa Cruz rated poorly against comparable towns in California for bike and pedestrian safety. Some of the statistics used were a bit weak (see URLs at end of article) but the analysis made the City look bad -- and therefore lent justification and urgency to the SCPD's request to submit a major OTS proposal.
The OTS deadline for this proposal was January 31, according to the SCPD. SCPD went before the City Council with it on Jan 23rd, having done no outreach to any community groups in the preceding two and a half months, but also with only a week to go before the submission deadline. The City wanted funding to continue and expand "traffic safety" education programs in schools, and for political reasons such money is presently unlikely to come from the RTC; so there were good reasons to "go for it" and get some funding.
The City Council, after discussion, said they could not delay the grant without missing the deadline. However, due to the poor process, the Mayor proposed that a written comment period be established which would last until the following Monday morning (the 29th), when he would hold a public meeting for the purpose of examining and revising the grant language in the light of received comment.
The Council approved this compromise, and thus a written comment period of about five days (three working days) was won. More than a day of this comment period was lost to delays in getting the document out to the public. SCPD then said that written comment could not be submitted later than Friday at 5pm -- shortening the period to about 1.5 days. Fortunately Councilmember Reilly took up the issue on the public's behalf, and the City Clerk said she would continue to accept written comment right up until the morning of Monday.
Written comment focussed on the carcentric language of the grant proposal. Bike and pedestrian advocates asked why all the objectives in the proposal were directed towards "education and training" for cyclists and pedestrians, as if these road users were the problem. Repeatedly, comment called for more attention to be paid to dangerous driving, and to reducing bias in police handling of "accidents". (See URLs below.)
At the Mayor's meeting on the following Monday, the 29th, oral feedback continued along the same themes: why did the police not ask cyclists and pedestrians what would make us safer? why were motorists invisible in the grant language, even though we know that dangerous driving is quite common? By a sort of "gentleman's agreement", the Gutierrez case was not mentioned at this meeting, but it seemed to hover in the background.
Bike advocates also asked how a grant allegedly focussed on bike safety could ignore the issue of night lighting -- lack of bike running lights being strongly linked to after-hours collisions between motor vehicles and cyclists. As with many "safety" proposals that come from police and traffic authorities, there was a narrow focus on helmets alone, (i.e. on partial mitigation of the effects of collision) but insufficient emphasis on *preventing* collisions. Preventive measures like traffic calming, providing lights to cyclists, aggressive enforcement against dangerous drivers, etc. were not in the plan.
The police really did not seem to understand the problem. They kept referring to the language of the grant as "neutral," and saying that OTS requires such "neutral" language. Various proposals were made by the public to encourage ped/bike reporting of dangerous driving, to crack down on crosswalk violations, and to increase input and participation by local advocates.
Finally the Mayor called "time" and said he would work to revise specific language in the grant before it went out.
The Mayor succeeded in rewording a couple of critical items in the grant. Motorists became partially visible in the enforcement agenda, and bike lights crept into the "safety" agenda. Language about consultation with community/advocacy groups was strengthened a bit, and the idea of a "bike hotline" (for cyclists to report dangerous driver incidents) was introduced.
These small tweaks to what remains a fundamentally "traffic authoritarian", carcentric proposal, actually represent a significant victory for the bike and ped advocates in our town. Although the SCPD grant was not transformed into a pro-bike, pro-pedestrian, progressive program, we can hope that a message was delivered.
The unusual amount of public concern and feedback over a minor police grant will, I hope, have sent a message to our City Council and City staff that those who walk and bike in this town also count. Meanwhile, as of this writing, Shawn Duncan is still waiting to hear anything more from the police about his case.