It seems like some members of the police department in Los Angeles need to get a life or get some additional assignments from the dispatcher because they have too much time on their hands. The AP:
An 82-year-old woman who was given a jaywalking ticket for taking too long to cross a busy street won’t have to pay the $114 fine.
Mayvis Coyle had become something of a sensation after her case was publicized in April. Senior citizen advocates were outraged at her treatment. News camera crews showed up at her door unannounced.
Last week, however, Coyle received a mailed notice that a court commissioner had found her guilty of jaywalking but suspended the fine.
“It sounds like a compromise, like they’re trying to save face,” Coyle’s son, Jim Coyle, told the Los Angeles Daily News, which first reported the ticketing. “We’re grateful for everyone’s support.”
When you read the AP story, no matter what your age, it’s clear that someone needed to get their priorities straight — and it wasn’t Coyle:
Police said Coyle entered a busy intersection on February 15 after the red “Don’t Walk” sign had started blinking.
Coyle said the white “Walk” signal was flashing when she started across the intersection with her cane in one hand and groceries in the other.
“How could she have gone any faster?” said Bill Daniel, chief executive officer of ONEgeneration, a senior-services agency. “It just seems like we have to be more patient.”
Police maintain that the officer was looking out for Coyle’s welfare because of a rising number of pedestrian deaths.
Uh, huh. Ticketing a senior who may not be able to walk faster is REALLY going to be a deterrent. All it did was throw some unneeded — and unwarranted — stress on a senior citizen. A ticket for a slow-moving senior with a cane (who was also grappling with a bag of groceries) really sends a message throughout the city and reduces pedestrian deaths, doesn’t it?
Except the message it sends isn’t about the lady who got the ticket or how she crossed the street.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.