On the evening of August 18 last year, Eboni Senai Hawkins, cofounder of Chicago’s chapter of the black bicycle group Red Bike and Green, witnessed Joshua Thomas, a 22-year-old African-American, being stopped by police while riding a Divvy bike-share cycle on the sidewalk near Chicago Avenue and Rush Street. The officers handcuffed and frisked Thomas, called in the serial number on the baby-blue bike, and discovered it was stolen. They arrested Thomas, who was later sentenced to two days in jail.
All told, 23 of the 30 adults ticketed for sidewalk riding in the two downtown police districts during July and August of last year were African-American, including 20 black men, according to records the city provided earlier this month. That’s about 77 percent of the ticket recipients in a city that’s roughly a third African-American.
The CPD says it has used sidewalk biking enforcement to recover stolen cycles.
A CPD representative confirmed this area is heavily policed due to numerous assault cases last year. Most recently, on December 9, a group of teens attacked three bystanders on the el platform, fracturing one man’s eye socket. Eight of the 30 ticketing incidents, including half of the arrests, occurred within this zone. CWB also noted that Appling and Thomas had each been arrested several times in the area for various offenses.
Five tickets were issued there between 5:27 and 6 PM in what CPD spokesman Howard Ludwig confirmed was a targeted enforcement event. “Keeping . . . cyclists in designated bike lanes is an important measure of protecting the safety of all citizens,” he said. However, there was no bike lane on Michigan at the time, although the Chicago Department of Transportation installed one in late July. One of the three white women cited told me she wasn’t cuffed or frisked.
John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago.
