Jaywalking ticket enforcement sparks backlash

The arrest of a man for disorderly conduct and jaywalking set off swift criticism of how the police department handled the matter. This screenshot comes from a recording posted on Facebook about the arrest.

By Charles Sercombe
Hamtramck police have suspended their crackdown on jaywalkers and other pedestrian law enforcement after the controversial arrest of a man on the southend last Saturday.
It’s a complicated matter, and one that prompted a community meeting in city hall on Wednesday afternoon and later, that day, the city council held a special meeting to discuss the matter.
At the Wednesday afternoon meeting, about 20 people attended, mostly from the Yemeni-American community and most of whom were identified as community leaders. The man who was arrested, whose name has not been released by the police department, is a Yemeni-American. He was not at the meeting.
Police Chief Anne Moise gave some background information on the pedestrian enforcement program and showed a recording taken from a patrol car camera of events leading up to the arrest.
The officer did not have a body camera, so the police car recording does not show all of the encounters that followed or what was entirely said.
The recording started off showing an officer warn a person getting into their vehicle that they had just jaywalked across Jos. Campau, near Goodson.
As the officer was writing up a warning notice, another man appears in front of the vehicle, and attempts to walk across the street. That’s when the officer yelled out for the man to stop, and instead go to the nearest cross walk.
That man, who was later arrested, shouted back to the officer: “That’s f—— stupid.”
That man leaves the scene without further incident.
After the officer finished with the warning ticket, he started to drive off when yet another person is warned not to cross the street where there is no crosswalk.
And that’s where the man who shouted at the officer once again appears, out of view of the police recording, and is once again heard shouting obscenities at the officer.
This is when the officer demands to see his identification. The man repeatedly asks for a reason, and insists he doesn’t not have to produce an ID.
After some back and forth, the officer then announces to the man that he is under arrest for being disorderly. However, in another recording by a bystander, the officer does warn the man to present an ID, or be arrested for obstruction. The man still refused.
That recording was not shown to community members gathered at the Wednesday meeting.
The man was arrested without further incident, and he was also issued a ticket for jaywalking after being arrested.
That police recording of events prompted a lively discussion at the Wednesday meeting.
State Rep. Abraham Aiyash, whose district includes Hamtramck, and is a Hamtramck resident, offered some pointed criticisms, saying that the officer never told the man who was arrested that he was being issued a ticket for jaywalking.
The man had repeatedly asked the officer why he was asking for his ID and whether he had done something wrong. The officer did not respond to those questions, according to the police recording of events.
Aiyash pointed out, after watching the recording of the police camera recording, that the officer’s continued demand to see an ID didn’t make sense.
“This is not the Taliban,” Aiyash said.
Aiyash said the officer’s conduct was “unreasonable.”
“The optics of this looks terrible now,” he added.
The arrest of the man recorded by a bystander, which the police recording does not show, was posted on various Hamtramck Facebook pages. That scene alarmed a number of residents, and there was swift criticism of the officers on the scene.
Details about the events leading up to the arrest had not been released to the public by the police department prior to Wednesday’s meeting. Also prior to Wednesday’s meeting, Chief Moise did not respond to an email from The Review asking for an explanation of events.
What also came to light in this incident was that the police department had a grant to enforce pedestrian safety laws.
That surprised some elected officials and the public, who said they had no knowledge of the grant or the enforcement program.
City Manager Kathy Angerer explained that, back in October of 2020, the city council approved a small state grant for $8,000, which required the city to kick in an additional $2,000, to concentrate on pedestrian safety – including handing out warning tickets to violators of jaywalking, or even issuing regular tickets.
Hamtramck has dozens of pedestrian injuries from cars each year, and residents have been, technically, jaywalking across streets for decades.
In a note from the city administration to the city council about the grant, it was explained:
“This grant program provides the federal funding to assist law enforcement officers to implement a high visibility traffic enforcement program designed to protect pedestrians and to educate community members about illegal/dangerous walking and driving behaviors and to enforce these traffic laws. …”
At the time of the council’s approval last October, there was no resistance to the grant. Councilmembers who approved the grant were: Ian Perrotta, Andrea Karpinski, Nayeem Choudhury, Fadel Al-Marsoumi, Mohammed Alsomiri and Mohammed Hassan.
Chief Moise said she stepped up enforcement this month because the grant was about to expire at the end of September, and the city was under a requirement to show that enforcement was made.
She said the department had lagged behind in the program because of the Covid pandemic, which greatly reduced the interaction of officers and the public for the past several months.
But that explanation only prompted pushback.
“To all of a sudden say we’re going to enforce something is so tone deaf,” Aiyash said.
Chief Moise admitted that the department failed to get the word out about the enforcement program.
“I take full responsibility,” she said.
City Manager Angerer also agreed that the city needs to do a better job of messaging to the community.
Moise noted that the department had stepped up enforcement of pedestrian laws in areas of the city that the state had pinpointed as high-accident zones, which includes the intersection areas of Jos. Campau and Caniff, and Campau and Holbrook, as well as several areas on Campau in the southend.
This is an edited version of what appeared in print.
Posted Aug. 20, 2021