Downtown in the Times

I grew up in Granada Hills, and a family friend of ours lived on a standard small residential street. Crossing the street to her car, a motorcycle cop pulled up and wrote her a jaywalking ticket. It’s the most ridiculous thing ever, considering the location, but she had to pay it nonetheless. Ridiculous? Yes. But it’s not limited to Downtown.

^ That’s a cop playing the role of tax collector. The city treasury, after all, does depend on taxes, which is where the salaries, health-care benefits and pensions of police officers come from.

And so catching and fining a person for jaywalking? Easy and lucrative.

Catching and fining a person for urinating or, worse, defecating in public? Where’s the cop when he’s most needed?

If members of the LAPD have enough time to be a tax collector, they better not claim their department isn’t well staffed enough to deal with far more serious problems in Downtown or elsewhere.

What is “inappropriate use of a milk crate” except pretext for harassing people who sit on them? It’s just unjust law, and a violation of civil rights, that discriminates against the homeless. Believe it - if the person sitting on a milk crate in Granada Hills was homeless or looked like a vagrant, people would look the other way.

I see more reckless jaywalking in Skid Row than in any other part of Downtown. It seems like every time we cross there in a car we are always having to slow down for someone in the jaywalking. What I’ve found is that if I gun it, they hear my engine and stop. If I slow down, they take their sweat time ‘cause they’ve made me their bitch for a second. Given the level of pedestrian activity at all hours on those streets, I’d really think someone would have already made a stink about falling down drunk into the street and suing the City over it. My solution, Fence Fifth Street!

Let the cops do their jobs.

Wait! There was another article! Saturday in the Times….Lauren from The Hills took us on a tour of Santee Alley!

Jaywalking doesn’t normally apply to residential streets. There have two be traffic controls (lights) at both ends of the street according to California Vehicle Code 21955.

That was worded that way so that residential streets would not apply.

You may have a point about the jaywalking tickets, but you can’t possibly contend that giving out littering citations for falling cigarette ash – which I’ve heard about from multiple sources – is done anywhere else in the city, or that it could possibly constitute anything except unjust harassment of Skid Row residents.

I have to say, there is a lawlessness in that zone that can’t be ignored. People strolling across the street oblivious (not) to the traffic they are blocking, trash strewn all over the place. The city streets are not the place to work out one’s issues with authority. Clean it up.

Yeah I got one down here recently. It’s bullshit. Fuck the LAPD.

You downtowners need to assemble and demand that more crosswalks be built. YOu should also demand that sidewalks be widened and that other pedestrian enhancements be made. People often Jaywalk in LA because traffic crossings are one mile apart.