New York City law enforcement officials proceed to factor a disproportionately huge quantity of jaywalking tickets to other people of colour, stories Gersh Kuntzman in Streetsblog NYC.
“Of the 463 summonses for which race was known, 426 summonses, or 92 percent, were written to Blacks or Latinos. Only 27 tickets, or fewer than 6 percent, were issued to people identified as non-Hispanic whites.” Kuntzman notes that Black and Latino citizens make up 55 % of town’s inhabitants, following equivalent findings in 2019 and 2020. “Whites received 5.9 percent of the tickets even though they are 32 percent of the population.”
Jaywalking isn’t enforced similarly around the town, both. “According to the city’s database of summonses, only 47 of the city’s 77 precincts registered an illegal crossing ticket at all in 2023.”
A proposed invoice that might have legalized crossing out of doors of crosswalks won little fortify within the town council. Across the rustic, California decriminalized jaywalking in 2022, barring police from issuing citations when a crossing wasn’t ‘truly dangerous.’
