Nightstick-Wielding Thugs Seek to Legitimize Themselves By Changing The Law To Fit Their Behavior
A new definition of "parade" is going into effect on August 24 in New York City. This is yet another in a series of measures by the police to stop, detain, and generally harass bicyclists.
The new definition of parade will allow the police to arrest as few as two bicyclists riding together for "parading without a permit". I'm not kidding.
There will be a public hearing for the new definition at One Police Plaza on Wednesday, August 23, at 6 PM.
You can, and I suggest you do, attend the public hearing and contact the mayor about these new definitions. We must stop the criminalization of bicycle riding.
I never thought that sentence would come out of my mouth.
I wrote the Mayor a short, polite one. Read it after the jump.
News via Five Borough Bicycle Club.
Image of the 2004 RNC bicycle arrests courtesy Satan's Laundromat.
Dear Mayor Bloomberg,
I just read about the newly proposed rules regarding parades / bicyclists. (http://5bbc.org/nypdparade.pdf) Why are you doing this? With all the problems our city has with murder, homelessness, drug abuse, poverty, health care, and rape, just to name a few, wasting any effort on harassing bicyclists (or changing rules to make it easier to arrest and/or stop bicyclists) seems worse than mean - it's irresponsible to allocate human or financial resources away from these larger, far more serious issues. Whatever you may think of the "critical mass" ride, changing the laws to classify two bicyclists together isn't targeting civil disobedience - it's targeting my wife and I.
Bloody hell. We get the same thing in the UK. I get this vibe that the London and New York police must be a secret law-enforcement arms of Exxon or something...
The Critical Mass held in London had something similar thrown at them by the coppers, but the judge disagreed: http://www.urban75.org/photos/critical/june_2006.html