By Katherine Marie Anderson Santa Monica
Editor: I read that the Santa Monica Police Department (SMDP, July 1, page 1) had the time to ticket one of your reporters who, while working at her job, reportedly was standing in the street in front of the YMCA about a foot from a curb between two parked police cars while taking a photograph of the police at a crime scene.
Evidently, the police cited the reporter for failing to “yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway so near as to constitute an immediate hazard,” at least according to the code section the police elected to use. Perhaps standing next to a parked police car constitutes an immediate hazard, or maybe it’s having the press so near and observing the police that constitutes an immediate hazard to our police department.
Something like this could only happen in Santa Monica, where the police seem to have an overabundance of time to ticket someone who has a job and is actually working, and who it appears is not violating any law, including the code section above. I’m embarrassed our police would try and stretch the law just to write a ticket to someone actually working.
And only in Santa Monica would the police stretch the law unreasonably to cite this working person while at the same time choosing to ignore the hoards of drunken, unemployed homeless who sleep, urinate and defecate in our parks, on our sidewalks and in our streets, making those parks, sidewalks and streets unsafe and unusable for our children. The most unfortunate thing is that it would not take stretching the law to ticket or arrest homeless lawbreakers. No, just the application of existing law and an effort on the part of the police. But as a Santa Monica resident with two small children who cannot use our parks, I’ve discovered that the city and the police find it much easier and preferable to target and persecute responsible working people because the city and the police can’t be troubled to take on the homeless.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 2, 2004. Read the original PDF.