(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a new law that decriminalizes jaywalking across the state.
The law has been justified with the argument that pedestrians from ethnic minorities have been receiving more jaywalking tickets from state police than other people, Breitbart News reported.
The new law – AB 2147 – also known as the “Freedom to Walk Act” is supposed to “end to a cultural difference that has marked otherwise libertine Californians as being uniquely deferential to laws governing pedestrian traffic.”
The report points out the difference between Californians and Americans in other states as the former tend to obey “don’t walk” signals more often at pedestrian crossings.
It notes that Californians were mocked for that in the 2011 movie “Friends with Benefits” with Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake.
The Freedom to Walk Act was sponsored by Phil Ting, a Democrat member of California’s State Assembly from San Francisco. Ting issued a special statement to celebrate Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing of the law.
“It should not be a criminal offense to safely cross the street. When expensive tickets and unnecessary confrontations with police impact only certain communities, it’s time to reconsider how we use our law enforcement resources and whether our jaywalking laws really do protect pedestrians,” the Assemblyman said.
“Plus, we should be encouraging people to get out of their cars and walk for health and environmental reasons,” he added.
Before the adoption of the Freedom to Walk Act, Ting had made another legislative attempt to decriminalize jaywalking in California, pursuing “fairness in the way fines are assessed and prevention of potentially escalating police stops.”
“Jaywalking is arbitrarily enforced throughout California, with tickets disproportionately given to people of color and lower-income individuals who cannot afford tickets that can often total hundreds of dollars,” the report said.
The state law decriminalizing jaywalking is going to enter into effect on January 1, 2023.
Under it, law enforcement officers would no longer be able to issue fines or even detain people for jaywalking.
The new law only allows the police to prevent pedestrians from jaywalking in cases where pedestrians may be in “immediate danger of collision with a moving vehicle or other device moving exclusively by human power.”
Working class Americans can barely afford to buy groceries, food, or find baby formula, but at least Gov. Gavin Newsom is cracking down on the kitchen table issue that matters most: decriminalizing jaywalking due to racial bias. https://t.co/7rgxbEOlFv
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 2, 2022
