Contents
How Laws Work
The War on Runners
Laws on Using the Sidewalk
Why Run in the Street?
Why Run at Night?
Ticketed for Being a Runner
Ticketed by a Shavano Park Officer Defying the Governor’s Order to Wear a Mask During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Epilogue
.
How Laws Work
I am a lawyer. And as a lawyer, in my years of exposure to the law, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: rules are made to be broken.
No, I don’t mean that people should go around deliberately doing illegal things. I mean that it is hard to write a rule that fits all situations. Rules that look simple and obvious are especially likely to have problems.
Here’s an example that everyone has heard of: “Thou shalt not kill.” The rule is clear, right? It is part of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, printed in Exodus 20:13 and reprinted in Deuteronomy 5:17. And it is accompanied a number of Bible stories in which the ancient Israelites did exactly what the commandment said not to do: they went forth and killed.
For instance, we have Deuteronomy 20:16-17:
However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them – the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites – as the Lord your God has commanded you.
Regardless of whether a person believes that the Israelites should have killed the Canaanites, the reported fact is that they did — and, moreover, that they were ordered to do so, by the same God who gave them the commandment carved in stone.
A humble person might receive that perplexing information as a call to learn, and to think, not only about God, but also about seemingly simple rules. No doubt many Bible readers, being truthful with themselves, have recognized that there is a problem here, and have sought to learn about it and to become better practitioners of their religion.
But that is not how the careerists see it. What I saw, during my pre-ministerial studies in college — this was before I became a lawyer — was that the minister feels compelled to make excuses for God, because God does so much stuff that just doesn’t fit within what the minister wants the Bible to say. And so we have an endless supply of theologians doing exactly that. We have, for instance, William Lane Craig, who says, “God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites when He sees fit.” Which, I guess, means that the Israelites weren’t actually killing them. We have Markus Zehnder‘s argument that this was just “ordinary warfare, with the initiative for the violent conflict generally lying on the side of the Canaanites.” In other words, the Canaanites could legitimately be killed because they defended themselves against the Israelite invaders. We have myriad Bible translations, some of which say it is actually a commandment against “murder,” not “killing,” and then lots of people explaining that war isn’t murder, it is just killing, and that is OK. Which makes sense, right? Wasn’t Jesus the one who said, Kill your neighbor?
You get the idea. You can start with a very simple four-word command, and wind up with people spending their lives writing circles around it, and persuading others to do just the opposite of what it says — and them believing that this was exactly what the lawgiver wanted them to do.
Well. If you can get that kind of snafu in something as important as the foundational text for several of the world’s major religions, you can sure as hell get it when legislators sign off on some minor law without even bothering to examine what it might mean.
The War on Runners
Which brings us to the war on runners and bicyclists. In previous posts, I have noted that the American automobile pathology basically ruins bicycling in this country. In this post, I turn to the situation of the runner. Running, I have said, is safer, partly because bicyclists are more vulnerable to psychopathic drivers.
On the other hand, most drivers have at least ridden a bicycle, whereas most have not done any real running since (maybe) a few required laps on a nice, level track in high school. If you think it is difficult to get someone to move their butt from the couch to a bicycle seat, you should try persuading them to strap on the shoes and do the hard work of becoming a runner. Every now and then, you might encounter someone like an ex-girlfriend of mine, who decided to give running a try and — wow! it actually reduces my blood pressure! But for the most part, there are the runners, and then there is the rest of America, telling us how to do it properly.
But one thing at a time. For starters, let me not take for granted that everyone knows running is good for you. Some people may not be too sure about that. How about the old idea that running is hard on your joints? Not true! Experts no longer believe that the impact of running injures your knees. In fact, for an older guy like me, regular running actually keeps the joints working. I have a left knee injury from being T-boned by a driver in New York City in 1987, and I have a right ankle injury from stepping off a tailgate while carrying 75 lbs. of asphalt shingles in, I think, 1971. I find that these old injuries become more painful and obtrusive when I do not run. By this age, my father — not a runner — had already had dual knee replacements. My brother — not a runner — has had surgeries on his feet. So far — knock on wood — despite my old injuries, my legs and feet are in much better condition than theirs were at the same age.
According to Healthline, health benefits of running (ideally, 2.5 hours per week) include improved sleep and mood and reduced risks of cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurological diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s), and death from heart attack or stroke. Business Insider (Loria, 2018) says, “Many experts consider exercise to be the closest thing to a miracle drug” — noting, along with the benefits cited by Healthline, that running not only seems to improve knee health but also makes the brain more resistant to stress.
In a nation that is trying to help its people become healthier and cut spending on healthcare services, it makes no sense to pass laws and pursue policies that penalize running and endanger runners.
Laws on Using the Sidewalk
An example of a law that penalizes running and endangers runners: the one that requires runners to use the sidewalk, regardless of whether that makes sense in the particular situation. This law varies from state to state. Here’s the version found in Texas Transportation Code 552.006:
A pedestrian may not walk along and on a roadway if an adjacent sidewalk is provided and is accessible to the pedestrian.
It looks pretty simple, right? But let us learn from the Israelites. The simple law may not be so simple, when you stop reading it and start living it. Go out for a run, on the sidewalks in your neighborhood, and you might find that the seemingly simple rule becomes confusing and even dangerous. Consider:
- What does “pedestrian” mean? Should it include sprinters? (You might want to watch the accompanying video before deciding.) How about little kids riding little tricycles? Bigger kids riding little bikes? Does it include scooters? What if they have motors?
- What does “adjacent” mean? For example, many streets have a sidewalk on one side but not on the other. Must a pedestrian cross a potentially dangerous street in order to get to the sidewalk on the far side, or is that not considered “adjacent”?
- What does “accessible” mean? It could mean, are you physically able to walk over and put your feet on the sidewalk? Or it could mean, does the sidewalk offer safe and practical accessibility — does it work for the purposes intended by a runner, a skater, or a wheelchair operator?
- What does “sidewalk” mean? One might consider this obvious: it is the line of pavement, usually concrete, that runs alongside the roadway. But in some states — including Florida, according to BikeWalkCentralFlorida — the “sidewalk” is considered the space between the curb and the adjacent property line, even if “tall grass, landscaping, and other challenges” render it unusable for pedestrians.
In the legal world, there are different ways to get answers to such questions. Sometimes you can just open a book or webpage that discusses the legal issues in detail. This is especially likely where many lives and/or many dollars hinge upon the outcome. On the question of running for exercise in Texas, trust me: nobody is researching, writing about, and preparing books and webpages to explore these sorts of legal issues in any detail.
It is much easier to make rules than to think about their possible consequences. Thus, for the most part, the primary way for ordinary citizens to get answers to such questions is to get arrested, spend thousands on a lawyer, and let him/her dig up obscure precedents or invent arguments on your behalf (see “ministers,” above). This is why everyone praises the rule of law: it is simple, practical, and cost-effective. (Pardon the sarcasm.)
The unfortunate reality is that cities and states know we are in this situation. So they don’t fine us to the point where we pretty much have to hire a lawyer and really fight their rules. They’re content to shake us down for a couple hundred bucks and send us on our way. So, for instance, we have the case of Tommy Bice, who was fined $245 by the City of Bryan for violating the Texas sidewalk law quoted above; and then we have the case of Romel Henderson, who was fined $409 by the same city for the same thing. Why the difference? Good question. Add it to the list of other questions about this law.
On the positive side, the laws in some states are less hostile to pedestrians. For instance, Ohio Revised Code 4511.50 says it is unlawful to walk along the road “Where a sidewalk is provided and its use is practicable” (my emphasis). Likewise Maine Title 29-A, ch. 19, sec. 2056. And, even in Texas, some cities have exercised their option to supplement the state law. Here, for instance, are excerpts from San Antonio’s ordinance:
WHEREAS, bicyclists and pedestrians are allowed to use the roadway by law in Texas, but these users do not have the same physical protection as motorists and are at greater risk of injury or death; and
WHEREAS, approximately 50 cyclists and 400 pedestrians are killed every year in Texas; …
NOW THEREFORE:
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SAN ANTONIO: …
[A] Vulnerable Road User means … [among other things] a pedestrian, including a runner, physically disabled person, child, skater, … a person operating … a bicycle ….
An operator of a motor vehicle passing a vulnerable road user operating on a highway or street shall:
vacate the lane in which the vulnerable road user is located if the highway has two or more marked lanes running in the same direction ….
An operator of a motor vehicle may not maneuver the vehicle in a manner that is intended to cause intimidation or harassment to a vulnerable road user; or threatens a vulnerable road user.
This ordinance appears to say that it may be illegal to walk along the edge of the roadway if there is an adjacent sidewalk — but that’s no excuse for motorists to threaten you. Regardless of whether your behavior is legal, the fact remains that you are a vulnerable user — for all they know, you may be a person with Alzheimer’s, or a visitor from another state or country, where laws are different — therefore drivers have to take common-sense measures to avoid hitting you.
That should be the law nationwide. It isn’t. Thank your state legislature. By voting or not voting, you elected them!
Sadly, city mayors cannot overrule state law. The San Antonio ordinance shows that they can only penalize some behaviors on the part of distracted, incompetent, and mentally ill drivers who use their two tons of steel to kill walkers and riders. Further, ordinances don’t matter if the police are on the side of the psychopaths. That, unfortunately, is the reality in America. As discussed in another post, police nationwide commonly fail to charge drivers even when they are blatantly responsible for hitting and killing cyclists and pedestrians.
Why Run in the Street?
To the large majority of Americans, driving down the street, the situation is obvious: “We have paid good money to lay down perfectly good sidewalks; you need to use them.” People saying this sort of thing tend to be those who rarely use sidewalks beyond their own front door. Generally speaking, they have no clue as to why they might be wrong.
People who actually use the sidewalks are likely to come into contact with reality soon enough. It only takes one encounter with a driver who comes shooting out of a driveway, staring hard to his/her left, to see if cars are coming, as s/he rolls right across the sidewalk and any pedestrian who happens to be on it. I’ve had those experiences. Like, once, on the Indiana University campus. Sweet young thing, driving, talking on her phone, looking everywhere except right in front of her. I was running on the edge of the street, so she didn’t hit me before she came to a stop. I smacked her car hood and her head turned, eyes opened wide, jaw goes slack, and I can just hear her thinking, “Oh, I almost knocked that man out into the street in front of that delivery truck.” A few experiences of that type will teach the sensible runner to run along the edge of the street, so as to be beyond the point where most drivers stop before proceeding into the roadway.
But you need not be a runner, or experience that particular situation, in order to learn what’s the matter with sidewalks. You can get to the same place by just putting yourself in the shoes of people who might not be exactly like you.
The wheelchair user is a good example. I wouldn’t advocate that wheelchair users go riding down the edge of the street if they have an alternative. Unlike the runner, wheelchair riders are generally unable to hop up on the curb and wait until a car passes.
Nonetheless, the wheelchair is a great device for awakening people to what others experience on our sidewalks. Trying to use a wheelchair on a sidewalk is one example of what we taught fourth-graders in the disability awareness workshops that I participated in during my social work education. In these workshops, the kids tried to read things that imitated what a dyslexic person would see; they tried to engage in everyday activities while sitting in a wheelchair.
If we were to put you in a wheelchair on an American sidewalk, you would quickly get up to speed on the rather large number of little barriers in what you thought were perfectly flat and smooth sidewalks. Suddenly you discover that sections of the sidewalk are uneven: you are struggling against an angle. One section is higher than another; it is like a little wall that your wheelchair must climb over without tipping. There are holes. There are fallen branches. Your wheels get stuck in gravel and dirt, turned by sticks, and stopped by twigs.
Other problems should be more obvious to everyone. Often, city employees fail to keep them clear. The police do not ticket people for blocking sidewalks and bike lanes with trashcans and with illegally parked vehicles. Street crews do not keep sidewalks clear of vegetation: branches hang down, twigs stick out from bushes alongside, weeds take over down below. There can be broken bottles in those weeds. The sticks poking out of trees and bushes are often dry, hard, and leafless. They can be hard to see even in daylight. But that won’t prevent them from giving you permanent eye damage. And then there’s the fishing line and the wire that you’ll never even see. In some spots, vegetation completely takes over the sidewalk. You have to break the law — you have to step out into the street to get around it.
A San Antonio bike lane
In these regards, the situation for runners is much like the situation for bicyclists: the only safe place to travel is out in the traffic lane. Out there, cars smash, pick up, or blow aside the nails, broken glass, sticks, cardboard boxes, and other debris. Sure, streets have holes and cracks and debris too. But runners quickly learn that streets tend to be much, much better funded, better lit, and better maintained than sidewalks. Your odds are much better out there.
In other words, if you want a safe biking experience, do not ride in a bike lane. That’s where all the rocks, random pieces of steel, plastic bottles, discarded mattresses, and raccoon skulls accumulate. Riding in a bike lane invites a crash. I have a five-inch scar on my right shoulder due to surgeries to repair bone fractures incurred during a bike crash. I would rather not have another.
Yet even these remarks may fail to convey just how alien it can be, in Texas, to use the sidewalks. For example, imagine trying to ride your wheelchair down the sidewalks in this photo:
Sidewalks in San Antonio
As you see, it is physically impossible to run along the sidewalks, in many neighborhoods, because residents and/or cities have insisted on almost completely blocking them with stone monoliths dedicated to the mailbox. So if you live in this sort of neighborhood, you invite a traffic ticket from a hyperactive cop if you even try to use the sidewalk.
If you want to know why runners prefer the street, the San Jose Mercury News (Richards, 2014) provides a list of reasons submitted by readers. Excerpts:
There are virtually NO “perfectly good sidewalks” in the 3-mile radius of my home where I run. The sidewalks are in disrepair with raised edges that can trip you up no matter how careful you are. Also, many residents do not sweep their sidewalks. Leaves and needles make for slippery surfaces, especially after it rains. …
Sidewalks are simply not safe for running. The uneven sections are trip hazards for runners. I have scars on my knees and elbows from falls, and every one happened when running on a sidewalk.
When I walk in the streets, this is what I am thinking: There are too many uplifted sidewalks waiting to trip me, resulting in broken body parts. … Williams doesn’t realize that the “perfectly good sidewalks” may look perfect from her driver’s seat, but not up close. It doesn’t take much to catch a toe when walking, and I am not that old.
I’m particularly tall (6-foot-7) and the various trees/bushes along sidewalks around Berkeley very often are not trimmed high enough for me to walk without ducking a lot. It often feels like I’m almost doubling over. So walking in the street means I greatly reduce getting hit in the face with a branch and don’t have to duck every few steps.
Quora (MacDougall, 2019) offers some more:
There are driveway aprons you have to go down and up without tripping. There are lamp posts, sign posts, fire hydrants, utility boxes, trees and the planter boxes around them, trash bins, ash cans, newspaper racks, vehicle bollards. …
Tree root cracks, and other cracks, are big hazards. I still have scars from a fall tripped by a tree root crack many years ago. My wife broke a rib tripped by one. …
There may be slow pedestrians who may move in unpredictable ways. Dogs on leashes are a major hazard …. Trying to run past an elderly pedestrian delicately balancing with a cane, or a toddler meandering, without hurting someone is risky.
Cars can pull into or out of driveways across the sidewalk, often from hidden locations. They often assume the sidewalk will be empty. …
Part of the problem is that roads are generally better maintained than sidewalks, because roads get transportation funding. Sidewalk maintenance is not well funded.
They left out one of my favorites: skunks. Where I live, there are always skunks. They come out at night. They root around in the dirt, sometimes right next to the sidewalk or street. They seem to be half-deaf and nearly blind. You can walk or run right up to them before they register you’re there. I’ve come close enough to kick them. Fortunately, they are passive. They lift the tail and run away. All except an aggressive one who would charge me as I walked down a nearby street. Not rabid: he lived too long for that. Just unfriendly. Regardless, I would rather give them a few extra feet of breathing space.
Complaints about the risk of tripping and falling on a sidewalk may seem trivial. I can assure you they are not. I echo the runners, just quoted, who spoke of injuries due to falls while running. In addition to scars and banged-up knees and elbows, two of my falls have resulted in broken ribs. The worst falls are the ones where your foot gets stuck, like when your foot gets snagged by a hole or branch. Then you don’t go bouncing along the pavement, just getting scraped up: you fall flat on your face. That’s how I broke my ribs.
The problem is compounded as I approach age 65. According to the CDC (2020), falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among adults age 65 and older. Presumably lethal falls occur especially among those who are especially old, aged 75 or 80 or more. I hope my running is keeping my bones and joints relatively strong, so that doesn’t happen to me.
Why Run at Night?
The problems just described are multiplied at night. When it’s dark out, you can’t see where the sidewalk is uneven, or choppy; you can’t see tree roots that will trip you, or potholes that will break your ankle. You can’t see those dead sticks poking out of the trees and bushes that the city fails to maintain. Streets can be uneven too, but there are far fewer pavement irregularities, and even a distant streetlight or vehicle headlight can assist in spotting them.
To those who have no clue about running, it must seem ridiculous that I would run at night and risk such injuries. Any person with a whit of common sense would run in the daylight, right?
Let me address that thought. First, as just explained, the sidewalk hazards are there even in daytime. I have tripped and fallen in daylight too, due to hazards that I did not see. The branches and vegetation remain in place, 24 hours a day. People in colder climates often have the additional problem that sidewalks are often just as full of ice and snow in daytime as at night.
These days, there is an additional problem. At present, in July 2020, the United States is in the grip of something known as COVID-19. It is a potentially lethal disease caused by a coronavirus. While experts remain unsure of many things about this virus, it does seem clear at this point that the virus is spread by people coming into close proximity with one another. Experts believe that it is more dangerous to be around people indoors, where air does not necessarily circulate well, but there have also been cases of infection due to being too close to others outdoors. As reported by the New York Times (Barkhorn, 2020),
Increasingly, when I leave the house I find myself not relaxed and rejuvenated by exercise and fresh air but anxious and frustrated at the terrible social distancing job my neighbors are doing. I see people walking in the middle of the sidewalk; families out together en masse, taking up the entire width of the path ….
All of these behaviors make it impossible to keep six feet distance. …
Running at night resolves those problems. When you run in the middle of the night (in my case, typically between 1 and 5 AM), as I do, you pretty much have the place to yourself.
Well, but what about wearing a headlamp while running, so as to be able to see where you are going? There are several things to consider. First, no headlamp will provide the sort of lighting that you get from your car headlights: they draw upon an electrical system far more powerful than the batteries in a headlamp. Moreover, cars have two headlights, several feet apart: this greatly reduces shadows and provides a much better sense of physical location and distance.
You can buy a heavy headlamp with strong batteries and a strap going over your head. I have adapted that kind of headlamp to my bike helmet. As shown here, it tends to involve more weight and hardware than most runners will want to have bouncing around on their heads, and it is at risk of getting tangled in overhanging tree branches — which, in the worst case, could break your neck:
Headlamp straps can be uncomfortable in the heat, can interfere with hats in the cold, and can give you a headache. A headlamp also draw bugs right into your eyes; and the brighter it is, the more bugs it draws.
You’re putting up with all this in order to have illumination — and yet, as you may have noticed if you’ve ever used a flashlight in a campground, the bright circle of light created by your headlamp suddenly makes everything else darker. That is, it significantly reduces peripheral vision. Your headlamp can’t be pointed everywhere at once. While you are dodging the tree branch in front of your face, shadows dancing among your feet conceal the tree roots lurking there.
Especially if you’re running at any speed, no headlamp is going to provide enough illumination to give you good protection. In the accompanying video, you can see how little illumination a runner will get, even from the powerful headlamp shown above. If you want to get aid from a headlamp, run in the street, because out there you don’t have to worry about branches and other obtrusions: you can focus on spotting pavement irregularities, and for that focused purpose the headlamp may help.
In other words, people who have spent years doing something — in this case, running — have probably already thought of the solutions that might come to the mind of someone who knows nothing about it. Believe it or not, runners are not actually looking for ways to make life complicated and unpleasant. We are actually interested in good solutions. That’s why, when we find a relatively good solution, we write blog posts like this one, to try to explain it to people who are not familiar with it.
I realize that some people are not good at putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. To them, the solution to every problem is just to do what they say — to live your life as they think you should. I guess this blog post is not written for someone who refuses to try to understand it.
For me, the single biggest reason to run at night is heat. I have a cardiopulmonary condition that, so far, the doctors haven’t quite figured out. Nobody seems to think I should quit exercising; it’s just that some exercise conditions are better than others. The problem is much worse in hot weather. Basically, I have problems when I run in the daytime in the heat. San Antonio is an especially bad place for me in this regard, because it gets so damned hot, as it is right now.
For me, during San Antonio’s many hot months, the difference between running in the daytime and running at night is the difference between running or not running at all.
To alleviate that problem somewhat, in hot weather I have gravitated toward doing more interval running. I find that, depending on the temperature and humidity, I may have cardio issues even after running a single mile. But interval running — that is, alternating sprints and walks, each a block or two long — reportedly produces a good workout; and, for me, the cooldown walks between sprints seem to eliminate cardio issues.
Air pollution is yet another issue. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has indicated that ozone pollution reaches its highest concentrations in afternoon and early evening. Particulate matter is also a problem. Research Pipeline concludes that air pollution drops pretty consistently overnight, reaching its best level at around 5 to 10 AM. For those who run along busy highways, of course, the earlier (and, most of the year, the darker) hours are better.
On a more subjective level, I simply prefer the quiet of the wee hours. There’s nobody out. Go after the bars close, and you can spend several hours biking with relatively few threats of getting killed. You can go for a two- or three-hour walk under the stars or the full Moon, with hardly anybody but your own thoughts to disturb you. It’s as close to the countryside as you can get in many city environments.
Ticketed for Being a Runner
I was moved to write this post due to an event that occurred yesterday morning — that is, about 4:30 AM on July 14, 2020. At that time, a police officer in the city of Shavano Park, Texas gave me a ticket for running along the edge of the street.
I have been running for nearly 40 years. I have run in a number of different cities. This was the first time that any police officer even bothered to say anything about it, much less ticket me for it.
It was only a warning ticket. I appreciate that the officer did not formally charge me with a crime, costing me hundreds of dollars. But in terms of my running, the effect was the same: the officer’s warning makes clear that I cannot run in Shavano Park anymore. I can’t run where there are real sidewalks, because they aren’t adequately lit and designed for running; and I also can’t run where there are no sidewalks, because suddenly I cannot be sure how Shavano Park officers will interpret the law in that kind of location.
It was really a surprise. I have been walking and running through Shavano Park for the better part of six years. I would have thought that most of the police officers working the night shift in that little city had become familiar, by now, with my presence on that city’s streets at night. On several occasions, I have exchanged a friendly word or two with some of them. As I say, none has ever suggested that I was walking or running in the wrong place.
A brief review of the Shavano Park policing situation may underscore just how heavily surveilled I have been, over these years. Shavano Park consists of a few housing developments stemming off from several larger (mostly four-lane) streets. The population of Shavano Park is only 4,138 (WPR). There are, I think, no bars or restaurants, generating nighttime activity; there are hardly any businesses at all.
To patrol this place, the police department of Shavano Park employs (would you believe) 19 officers (Wikipedia). That gives Shavano Park the equivalent of about 46 officers per 10,000 population. Thus, the town has about three times as many police officers per capita as the average American city (Governing.com, 2016). This relatively massive police force is hired to patrol a total of about nine miles of primary roadway. To some, the overkill will seem almost comic. But apparently the city can afford this, and more, given a reported median household income of $208,021.
To assist in patrolling — as you can see if you pass the parking lot at the unexpectedly large police station at night — the city appears to have about a dozen police SUVs. Even during the daytime, at least a third of them remain parked. Prices vary; but if they are the Ford Interceptors that have proved popular among police departments, they cost over $35,000 each, and can hit 137 MPH, according to the Detroit Free Press (Howard, 2019).
I haven’t kept count, but I would say that, on the large majority of occasions when I have walked or run through Shavano Park in the middle of the night, over these past five or six years, I have been passed by Shavano Police vehicles not just once, but several times. On a few occasions, those SUVs (sometimes more than one) have gone racing past me at, I would estimate, somewhere around 80 MPH. For the most part, they have just rolled past, apparently observing the 35 to 45 MPH speed limits governing most of Shavano Park’s main roadways.
During those many passes, the Shavano Park police could hardly have failed to notice me, running along the roadway: there was simply nothing else going on. To emphasize, these are major four-lane streets running through a substantial chunk of San Antonio; but at those hours, there have been numerous times when not a single vehicle has passed me for ten minutes or more. Unless the officer who ticketed me is new to the force, he has surely seen me out there any number of times.
On this particular occasion, I waved as he passed me. The last thing I expected was for him to do two U-turns and come back to ticket me, lights flashing. I had to wonder whether maybe he did so because the wealthy residents of Shavano Park have suddenly decided to discourage people from walking or running through town, for fear that we might somehow spread COVID-19 to their city. If so, there would not be many of us to intimidate: I don’t think I have ever seen another nighttime runner in Shavano Park.
This all seemed very strange. When I was a kid, one of my friends said that R.D. (full name withheld), whom I didn’t know personally — a state police officer or county sheriff or something — used to turn on his siren and lights just because he wanted to go ripping through a certain small town at high speed, and didn’t want to get in trouble for it. There is that old saying about how idle hands are the devil’s workshop. It did seem like the officer on Lockhill-Selma must have been pretty bored.
After he wrote me that ticket, I realized that I had better call the San Antonio police, to find out whether there was perhaps a Texas police campaign to control a troubling rise in suburban jogging. The answer seems to be no, there isn’t. The officer I spoke with said that San Antonio police might stop a person if they wanted to find out what was going on. If they did stop a person for that purpose, they would probably want to document the encounter, in case there was some later report of criminal activity in the area. He said that a warning ticket could serve as documentation for that purpose. But he also said there are other forms of documentation which, apparently, would not require the officer to intimidate people.
I explained that, in this case, the Shavano Park officer did not seem to be investigating suspicious behavior. He didn’t appear to be trying to document my presence in connection with any other activity in the area: there was nothing going on, and he didn’t ask what I was up to, or where I had been. He also wasn’t protecting anyone. I was not going to get hit, and I was also not going to distract any drivers. There were no drivers. It was 4:30 AM on a Tuesday. Lockhill-Selma was almost completely silent. In the ten minutes (or so) that he had me standing there on the sidewalk, only two vehicles passed.
The officer was clearly stopping me for only one purpose: to make sure that I would always limit my running to a surface that he could consider a sidewalk, regardless of its condition. After I described the situation, in our phone conversation, the San Antonio police officer replied that he, personally, had never issued a ticket for that. He said it was up to every officer’s individual discretion, but in his view the police had more important things to worry about.
As indicated in the accompanying video, the Shavano Park police officer felt that the law does not care why someone might violate it. The law simply insists that there must never be a violation. Needless to say, an officer with views like this will be writing a great many tickets, for all sorts of offenses, large and small. One mile per hour over the speed limit — off to traffic court!
That doesn’t seem to be what they teach in cop school. It also doesn’t seem to describe the behavior of most police. In the words of Police Chief Darrell Volz of Balcones Heights (another San Antonio suburb), “As police officers, we have a tendency to not enforce things unless they become an issue” (NEWS4SA, 2018).
Unless you’re talking about a bad cop, who is just looking for excuses to harass someone, most people (and certainly most police officers) seem to understand that there are bad laws. There have definitely been enough articles about such laws. Business Insider (2020) offers a number of examples, such as the Massachusetts law that subjects you to a $100 fine for playing only part of the national anthem. Most people also understand that there are laws that can do real harm if they are enforced inappropriately. A Quora discussion offers examples of instances in which the police would be doing more harm than good if they enforced every law in every possible situation.
So, as far as I can tell, it is no longer safe to assume that the police of Shavano Park are reasonable. If I run through their jurisdiction, I am at risk of being fined — up to $400, apparently — for trying to avoid potentially serious injury, on sidewalks (and perhaps dirt margins) that are unsafe for running at any hour, and especially at night.
Ticketed by a Shavano Park Officer
Defying the Governor’s Order to Wear a Mask
During the COVID-19 Pandemic
As indicated in the video, I would have been willing to discuss these matters with the police officer, at a suitable distance, but he was not interested. He cut me off after I told him that I have had the experience of falling and breaking ribs, by tripping while running on sidewalks at night. He made very clear that he didn’t care about that at all.
His philosophy seemed to be that the job of a police officer is not to write or interpret the law, but only to enforce it. He had a funny way of enforcing the law, though. On July 2, 2020, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued the following order, effective statewide at 12:01 AM on July 3:
Every person in Texas shall wear a face covering over the nose and mouth when inside a commercial entity or other building or space open to the public, or when in an outdoor public space, wherever it is not feasible to maintain six feet of social distancing from another person not in the same household ….
The governor’s order followed a similar order by Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff (June 25, 2020).
Contrary to these orders, this Shavano Park police officer failed to wear a face mask at any point in this encounter. I wasn’t wearing one either — but that’s because, under the orders of the governor and the judge, I was exempted from doing so, as I was “exercising outdoors.” I really didn’t expect to be having many conversations on Lockhill-Selma at 4 AM. Anyone who has engaged in strenuous exertion while wearing a mask, in temperatures of around 80 degrees, in highly humid conditions, will understand why a mask was not a realistic option. I am usually soaking wet with sweat by the time I finish my summertime runs. A mask would be essentially glued over my mouth.
For the officer, unlike me, the governor’s order contains no exemption. To emphasize, there is no exemption for police officers. To the contrary, police officers are among those categories of individuals who are most likely to encounter many people, in the course of a day. As such, the police are at high risk of becoming infected with the virus and spreading it to others.
Thus, after more than five years of undisturbed walking and running through and around Shavano Park, during which that city’s officers have seen me traveling along the edge of the roadway on countless occasions, this Shavano Park officer chose to ticket me in the middle of a pandemic, while defying an express order from the state’s governor to wear a face mask “wherever it is not feasible to maintain six feet of social distancing.”
To emphasize: I am an elderly man with a cardiopulmonary condition that puts me into the high risk category of people most at risk of being killed by the virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control (June 25, 2020), the risk of death from COVID-19 is very much higher with rising age and underlying cardiopulmonary conditions.
I went out to run in the middle of the night precisely to avoid this sort of dangerous interaction. Of all the times when this officer could have stopped me, and of all the ways in which he could have conveyed a general warning or concern (e.g., yelling or using his loudspeaker from his driver’s seat), he chose to put my life in danger by coming over to stand upwind, four feet away from me, talking to me without wearing a mask, and demanding physical contact with me through a request for my identification. I can only shake my head at this photo from the Shavano Park police department’s Facebook page:
The officer on the right, in this photo, bears some resemblance to the one who stopped me, but I am not certain it is the same person. Regardless, it seems the Shavano Park police are aware of the mask requirement when there’s a camera around, but they are allowed to disregard it at 4 AM.
This post may be viewed by readers at various times in the future, when the current situation may no longer be as clear as it is now. So I will insert, here, a New York Times chart summarizing the present death rate in Texas due to COVID-19:
Focusing on this metropolis in particular, the San Antonio Express-News (Christenson, July 8, 2020) reported, a week ago, that San Antonio hospitals were nearing capacity due to a surge in COVID-19 patients. KSAT.com reports that, as of yesterday, San Antonio hospitals have started to use refrigerated trucks to hold the bodies of people killed by COVID-19, because morgues can’t keep up with the death rate. Here is a COVID-19 Watcher graph indicating that the number of cases in this metropolitan area has quadrupled in the past four weeks:
After all these months of watching New York City and other parts of America struggle with this virus — after seeing 136,466 Americans killed — this officer’s behavior is simply inexcusable.
The encounter could have been worse — he could have pinned me to the ground and then thrown me in jail — but, considering what we have learned about the virus, and the numbers of deaths we have seen among ordinary people who didn’t really believe what everyone has been trying to tell them, the risks he imposed upon me were pretty bad, and they were completely unnecessary.
I am retired. Aside from exercising and trips to senior hour at Walmart (6 AM Tuesdays) every few weeks, I have pretty much stayed home. In the past several months, this encounter with the officer was the only time when I have had an interaction with anyone outside my household, where neither I nor the other person was wearing a mask. In fact, due to considerable concern about the virus, I have devoted a very substantial amount of time to maintaining a blog post that seeks to understand and offer related safety advice.
Obviously, we can dispense with the fiction that this officer stopped me because of his dedication to law enforcement. The more accurate statement seems to be precisely the opposite: he is deliberately flouting executive and judicial orders.
In that, he is apparently not alone. CBS News (Lewis, July 8, 2020) says, “Police officials in at least nine [Texas] counties … said they will not impose” the governor’s mask order. And the governor’s order grants them that leeway, if they have had minimal cases of COVID-19. But where the county does impose the mask requirement — and certainly where the police department’s Facebook page acknowledges that officers are expected to wear masks — there is no latitude for rogue officers to jeopardize public health.
Needless to say, the lives placed most at risk by such behavior may be those of the city’s own residents. This officer had no way of knowing whether I am perhaps an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19 — in which case he was the one at risk of being infected, and potentially infecting others within the city.
It is perhaps understandable that police in some remote, rural counties have decided not to impose the mask order. Maybe they don’t need it, or maybe they will just have to kill their people in their own way. We shall see. But Shavano Park is not out in the middle of nowhere, nor is it populated by people who don’t know any better. Shavano Park is completely surrounded by a city of 1.5 million people.
Having just seen four Fort Worth police officers make national news for failing to wear masks inside a gas station (e.g., Newsweek, July 11), the question is, how can Shavano Park spend such substantial amounts of money on its police force, and still wind up with policing that imposes a higher public risk than one would find in the majority of rural Texas counties?
Epilogue
I posted this item on July 15, 2020. I mailed a complaint to Shavano Park on July 17. On July 27, Shavano Park’s police department composed a letter, postmarked July 28, notifying me that the department had opened an investigation.
It appears that the department may have notified one or more of its officers of my complaint at that point. On July 29, this post received a sudden spike in page views. Also, on that date, someone attempted to post an anonymous comment in response to this post. That anonymous comment read as follows, in its entirety: “What a whiny law-breaking jag-off…”
The timing of that comment, and its reference to law-breaking, suggested that its author might be a member of the Shavano Park police department. If that is the case, it would be unfortunate. One would normally expect a public officer to have the courage to express his/her view clearly and forthrightly, as I have done, rather than toss out obscene remarks while hiding behind the cover of anonymity.
The content of the comment was also unfortunate. I am surprised that it should be necessary to reiterate that most people, including most police officers, are not so fixated on petty infractions. It is bizarre to insist that running along the edge of an empty roadway is “law-breaking” in any significant sense of the term. The comment does seem consistent with the impression of deep boredom on the part of some members of the Shavano Park police force.
It was baffling that the author of that remark would consider me the criminal (a/k/a “law-breaker”). Apparently s/he still did not understand that the Governor had ordered police officers to wear a mask during that phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. A grasp of that basic point would have made clear that the officer’s conduct was the real threat to public safety.
It seems, in short, that the author of that comment may be a Shavano Park police officer with a resentful attitude. If that is indeed the situation, it appears that I may be at risk of retaliation. That would represent a shocking departure from the friendly tone that I had experienced in previous encounters with members of that police force, going back years.
It did appear that my complaint achieved something. Shortly after I filed it, they moved the junk out of the bike path on George Road and trimmed some of the branches blocking one part of that trail, and apparently asked that driver to please stop parking in the bike lane. Also, somebody finally got out there and fixed the streetlight above what was the nearly invisible pole, shown in my video, directly in the path of the person running down the sidewalk on Lockhill Selma. So now, after months of invisibility, that pole is once again visible at night. Of course, that doesn’t do anything for the fact that sprinting remains impossible on that and other stretches of the sidewalk. Nor does it change the reality that many sidewalks, throughout the metropolitan area, are not suited for a variety of normal uses, at night or even in the daytime. In the real world, where people have to find a way to get down the road, punishing them for attempting reasonable workarounds is simply overpolicing.
Running & Biking 