*** Editor’s note: Dave Schwab is the reporter at San Diego Community Newspaper Group, publisher of La Jolla Village News. *** I went to a Padres game at Petco Park last May for a free T-shirt giveaway and left midway through, about 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. The shirt turned out to be almost the most expensive shirt I ever got. Wandering back to my car on foot through the dark, quiet and somewhat creepy streets of East Village to where I\u2019d parked my car, I got nabbed by a police officer for jaywalking. Now, let me say, up front that jaywalking is one of those petty “crimes” I always thought was on the books but never actually enforced. Certainly, I never thought I\u2019d be cited for such an offense in the middle of the night on a street with little or no traffic in a mostly deserted part of town. The officer lectured me on how dangerous it is not to use crosswalks. He asked for my license and repaired to his car, where I thought he would undoubtedly check to ensure I wasn\u2019t a serial killer, then return with a stern warning and allow me to go on my way. Much to my chagrin, he returned citation in hand. Upon looking up the citation, I found that the maximum fine was $300. That\u2019s roughly equivalent to six parking tickets at $50 a pop. And I wasn\u2019t even in a car. As a matter of principle, I decided I was going to challenge this citation, which I did. All the stuff you heard about the police and courts being understaffed and overburdened is totally true. In June, I pleaded not guilty, and my court date was set, for Groundhog Day, Feb. 2 of the following YEAR. Obviously, citing middle-aged guys for jaywalking in a deserted part of town in the middle of the night is a police priority. On Monday, Feb. 2, I showed up for my court date, expecting the officer wouldn\u2019t show for such a petty offense and that the charge would be tossed out. I struck up a conversation with the person next to me, who was fighting a speeding ticket (not his first). The officer who issued him his ticket didn\u2019t show; case dismissed. I wasn\u2019t so lucky. I can tell you this: If you challenge a traffic citation, you will get your day in court. The officer gave his account of what happened. I gave mine, noting the punishment (stiff fine) didn\u2019t fit the crime and that I deserved a warning, not a citation. I observed that police time would be better spent elsewhere on “bad” guys committing “real” crimes, not raising revenues for the city\u2019s general fund via police officers meeting their quotas. Did I have a hanging judge? That was one of my greatest fears. The judge turned out to be affable. He explained that, though seemingly a minor offense, jaywalking actually is a big problem downtown. He fined me but suspended the fine as long as I didn\u2019t commit the offense again. I thanked him, noting I wasn\u2019t a “serial jaywalker.” I told him (honestly) that I had changed my behavior since and was more careful about where \u2014 and how \u2014I crossed streets downtown. Lessons learned: Any traffic violation, no matter how minor, will likely be enforced if an officer sees you do it; judges are human and sympathetic, and if you plead your case, they will listen to you; the current legal system, if not broken, is certainly in need of major revision. In my view, a jaywalking ticket should never have made it onto a congested calendar. My suggestion: There should be some way of “filtering” out truly minor cases like nighttime jaywalking. In fact, there ought to be a counselor, or someone of the like, who reviews your case and briefly goes over all the legal obligations\/implications of it with you. Case closed.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
*** Editor’s note: Dave Schwab is the reporter at San Diego Community Newspaper Group, publisher of La Jolla Village News. *** I went to a Padres game at Petco Park last May for a free T-shirt giveaway and left midway through, about 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. The shirt turned out to be almost […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Scofflaw jaywalker learns his lesson on the streets","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[12360,11552,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-duplicate","category-opinion","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}