Biking in Norfolk a crime?

Local, Norfolk, Politics 1 Minute

Apparently. But only if you live in low-income neighborhoods.

Police records show dozens of bike seizures in the past three years from the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods, including Park Place, Huntersville, Barraud Park and public housing. Those same records show police steer clear of the city’s more affluent areas like Ghent, Larchmont/Edgewater and Lambert’s Point. No bikes were seized anywhere around Old Dominion University.

[…]

Norfolk netted almost $23,000 from the sale of seized and abandoned bicycles from 2006 through 2008, according to Pamela Marino of the Department of Public Works.

The article goes on to say that the findings of the investigative report were presented to all of the Norfolk Council but no one from the city, including the police chief, would say why the law requiring bicycle registration is not enforced in other neighborhoods.

Having been to civic league meetings across the city, I have often heard about police harrassment. To have a law on the books that is only enforced in low-income neighborhoods is, without doubt, harrassment. It is this kind of behavior on the part of law enforcement that makes citizens distrust them.

Kudos to WTKR’s Mike Mather for some excellent reporting. (Did I miss an article in The Virginian-Pilot about this?)

h/t The WashCycle

Published

14 thoughts on “Biking in Norfolk a crime?”

  2. If someone wants to not register there bike and it gets stolen and is unable to be returned that is their fault. When the city makes a law saying if you don’t register your bike we are going to steal it..well that’s just plain wrong.

  3. This sort of abuse is why DC repealed its own bike registration law last year (credit to Tommy Wells, for that). It wasn’t as systematic as Norfolk, but was greatly abused by the police. Maybe worth copying the effort.

  4. Having had plenty of experience dealing with the city on no skateboarding laws that did not exist (but they still charged me anyways, changed the code section, address, boycotted my work), I think I’ll be making repealing this BS law part of my candidates platforms.

  5. I saw the report about this on the eleven o’clock channel 3 news a couple of weeks ago. Remember thinking that this was the closest to real investigative reporting that I have seen in this area. Mike Mather took a camera into a city council meeting and confronted them about this issue. It wasn’t appreciated. The last I heard was that the police were holding a registration for bikes in the rich Ghent neighborhood. When asked why they wouldn’t go to a poor neighborhood to make it easy for for those residents? They didn’t have an answer.

  7. Come on City of Norfolk! I bet if you were to go and check to see if the council members or their immediate family members own bikes, they are not registered. This is going way to far, that should never be on the books. Yes, if you leave you bike out and it gets taken, your fault. Crazyness!

  8. VJP,

    That would be Jason Call, hes running in the 90th against Algie Howell. http://www.vote4call.org

    I would love to have either him or myself discuss our plans for the campaign and the issues we intend to champion. I have actually met you once before, at Joel Rubin’s show with Gary Byler before the November election.

    1. The 90th district is a state elected position, not a local position. Are you suggesting that bike registrations be done at a state level rather than a local level in order to prevent the Norfolk Police Department from punishing the poor and minorities?

      I don’t know the details about bike registration. Is it a state law or a local law? If it is a state law, the local city councils can’t recind it.

      That said, the fact that the Norfolk Police Department is taking bikes from people in poorer and minority areas while allowing people in rich WASPier areas to continue to have unregistered bikes falls under the discrimatory realm of “disparate treatment.” As such, it is wrong.

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