Jaywalkers in California have something to look forward to in 2023

This past summer, Phoenix Hamilton got a ticket after she walked across the street.

It was Linden Street in Chico and she had been getting a drink of water at a park on a 100-plus degree day.

While hot summer days are sure to return next year, jaywalking tickets like the one Hamilton received are likely to become much less common due to a new law passed this year.

Starting Jan. 1, 2023, it will no longer be illegal to jaywalk in California, "as long as it is safe to do so."

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB2147 into law last month, making it legal to cross the street outside a crosswalk. The governor's signature came just a day before the beginning of National Pedestrian Safety Month in October.

The bill defines when an officer can stop a person for crossing the street, which under the bill would be "when a reasonably careful person would realize when there is an immediate danger of a collision with a vehicle, according to the bill's author, Assemblyman Phil Ting, who represents parts of San Francisco and Daly City.

Ting said he wanted to decriminalize jaywalking because police often used jaywalking stops as an excuse to harass low income residents and people of color.

“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,” Ting said.

Hamilton said she felt she was stopped because she might have looked suspicious to the officer who ticketed her.

Hamilton is homeless and lives in Redding. But she was in Chico when she was ticketed in June for crossing the road in the area of Linden Street, near the One Mile Recreation Area.

There were no cars in the roadway when she crossed the street, she said. A police officer was parked in his patrol car in the park and apparently saw her cross the street, she said.

After she crossed the road, the officer approached Hamilton and asked her numerous questions not related to jaywalking, such as where she was going and what she had been doing, she said.

"He didn't tell me when he first pulled up to me that he was pulling me over for jaywalking. He started asking me questions, like, his exact words were 'where were you before you crossed the street?' And I was like, oh OK, this feels like a trick question, because I was just at the park," she said.

She recounted her response to him.

"OK, well, I just feel like you just stopped me just to stop me right now. So I feel like you think maybe I'm suspicious. And you know, I don't know. But if you think I'm suspicious, tell me that you think I'm suspicious. Don't try to use something else to ask me a bunch of questions about my whereabouts and what I've been doing and stuff. You know, it's not appropriate," she said.

At the end of their encounter, the officer wrote her a ticket for jaywalking. She said the ticket cost $120 in Butte County.

In Shasta County, a jaywalking ticket costs $190, according to Melissa Fowler-Bradley, Shasta County Superior Court executive officer.

Like the rest of California, the base fine in Shasta County is $25, but there are other fees, penalties and assessments added to the ticket cost, according to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

In 2021, the Redding Police Department issued 311 jaywalking tickets as infractions, according to Kristen Gurley, the department's crime analyst.

Advocates for decriminalizing jaywalking cited incidents similar to what happened to Hamilton as their reasoning for backing the law.

More: 2 Redding pedestrians who died when hit by motorists in August identified

According to the state Senate Rules Committee, 30 groups registered support for the bill this year. The California State Sheriff's Association, California District Attorney's Association and the American Society of Civil Engineers opposed the bill in the legislature, according to a bill analysis.

Mike McGinn, executive director of America Walks, wrote a letter to Lena Gonzalez, chairwoman of the state Senate Transportation Committee, supporting the bill.

"There is good reason more cities and states are repealing these unjust laws. To start, jaywalking infractions are unequally enforced. In Los Angeles County, Black people are three times as likely to be ticketed for jaywalking as white people. In San Diego, the disparity is more than four fold, according to California Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) data compiled by the California Bicycle Coalition," McGinn wrote.

Newsom vetoed a similar bill by Ting in 2021, but the bill was changed this year, adding language that says pedestrians may only enter a roadway when it is safe.

More: What must we do to add a crosswalk in Redding? Get COVID-19 time off? Ask the R-S mailbag.

The version of the law signed by the governor this year also does not "relieve pedestrians from the duty of using due care for their safety or drivers from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of pedestrians," according to a Senate Rules Committee analysis of the bill.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics note crossing a roadway can be deadly.

From 2016 to 2020, there were an average 969 pedestrian deaths a year in California. During the same time period, there were an average four deaths a year in Shasta County.

Pedestrian deaths in Shasta County accounted for about 12% of all traffic fatalities during those five years, according to the highway safety administration.

More: Shasta County officers disciplined for misusing communication system

Damon Arthur is the Record Searchlight’s resources and environment reporter. He is part of a team of journalists who investigate wrongdoing and find the unheard voices to tell the stories of the North State. He welcomes story tips at 530-338-8834 by email at damon.arthur@redding.com and on Twitter at @damonarthur_RS. Help local journalism thrive by subscribing today!

This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Jaywalkers in California have something to look forward to in 2023