Lawson, MO, bicyclist convicted for "pushing bicycle"

Ed Chasteen, a cyclist with multiple sclerosis, was charged with
"pushing a bicycle" in Lawson, Missouri, population 2300, in an
area where bicycle travel is prohibited both on the street and
the adjacent sidewalks of the business district. Local law
forbids even pushing a bike.

The judge had taken Ed's case under advisement to study the issues. We
just found out yesterday that the verdict came back "guilty".

Below is Ed's own version of the story. Below that, contact info for
Lawson city officials and links to background info.

---

When Law Loses Its Authority

By Ed Chasteen

When civil authority arbitrarily enforces its laws, those laws loose
their claim to justice. When I was allowed for 14 years to ride my
bicycle on Pennsylvania Avenue in Lawson and then one morning was told
by the Chief of Police that it was illegal under a city ordinance on
the books for 34 years, I became a victim of injustice. When the city
prosecutor refused to prosecute the ticket I was given and was fired by
the mayor and city council, justice was denied. When the new city
prosecutor and the judge employed by the city said I was guilty,
injustice was done.

This is the language of Lawson's city ordinances under which I was
given a ticket for "pushing a bicycle" in August 2004:

SECTION 225.020: BICYCLE REGULATIONS

A That no person shall be permitted to push or ride a bicycle on the
sidewalks or streets of Pennsylvania Avenue from fifth Street to the
Santa Fe railway tracks.

B That any bicycles on the streets after the street lights are turned
on in the evening, must be equipped with lights.

C That any parent found guilty of permitting any of the provisions of
this Section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon
conviction thereof shall be fined an amount not less than one dollar
($1.00) nor more than one hundred dollars ($100.00). Ord. No.
KK169-3,7-7-70

I fist rode my bicycle up Pennsylvania Avenue in the summer of 1990. If
I had been stopped by the police on this ride and told that I was doing
something illegal, I would not have done it again. If I had been told
at anytime over the next few months, I would have stopped and made no
complaint. But when after 14 years I was told, my sense of justice was
offended.

When I was allowed for 14 years to violate a law that had been on the
books for 20 years when I first rode into town, that law lost its moral
and legal authority. When law is enforced arbitrarily, it ceases to be
law and becomes a tool used by those in authority to maintain their
power. If law does not apply all the time to all the people, if it is
not enforced every time its violation is known, then we must cease to
call it law and know it by what it has become.

When I hear that some of my friends in Lawson are verbally abused
because I protest the arbitrary application of law, I am heartsick and
sad. I want to give up. But I cannot quite bring myself to surrender.
If I lose respect for myself, how can I expect others to respect the
notions of justice I hold dear?

The heart of my objection to the charge against me is that the 14-year
failure to enforce the law rendered its eventual enforcement immoral
and unjust. But I also have lesser objections. For one, there are no
railway tracks that cross Pennsylvania Avenue. So it is not possible to
know where bicycles are prohibited. Secondly, the only penalty called
for is that the parent of the offending party be fined.

My 91-year old mother has a second floor walk up in a Corpus Christi,
Texas condo. No elevator. She has a new car. She's never home when I
call her. She holds numerous offices in various lodges and churches.
According to the ordinance I've been found guilty of violating, she is
liable for the $75.00 fine and court costs I have been assessed. She
has a will of iron and could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. I doubt she
would pay the fine.

The amount of money I have been asked to pay is small. Why not pay it
and move on? Against all the troubles and injustice in the world, a
fine for "pushing a bicycle" hardly registers. When I was a boy in
Texas in the 1950s, Kitty Kallen had a hit song called, "Little Things
Mean Alot." She was on to more than she likely knew. Mighty canyons
have their origin in single drops of water. Over time the steady drip
of single drops erode the earth. So do single laws misapplied.

Having said all this and having now talked to my wife and my bike
riding friends, I have decided to pay the $97.50. I will not in the
near future ride to Lawson. More friendly places beckon. What the mayor
and the police chief have won I'm not sure. But they did win. My hat's
off to them.

---

Ed's email is hatebuster [at] aol.com

Contact info for Lawson city officials:

John Tracy, City Manager
City of Lawson
PO Box 185
Lawson, MO 64062
Phone: 816-580-3217
Fax: 816-296-4013
Email: lawsoncityclerk [at] aol.com

George Green, Mayor
City of Lawson
PO Box 185
Lawson, MO 64062

More info about the case:

http://www.mobikefed.org/2005/01/cyc...sclerosis.html
http://www.mobikefed.org/2005/01/nat...-story-on.html
---

--Brent
brent [at] brenthugh.com

On 12 Jan 2005 08:48:54 -0800
wrote:

Ed Chasteen, a cyclist with multiple sclerosis, was charged with
"pushing a bicycle" in Lawson, Missouri, population 2300, in an
area where bicycle travel is prohibited both on the street and
the adjacent sidewalks of the business district. Local law
forbids even pushing a bike.

The judge had taken Ed's case under advisement to study the issues. We
just found out yesterday that the verdict came back "guilty".

Below is Ed's own version of the story. Below that, contact info for
Lawson city officials and links to background info.


I've often made the point that I'd *like to rally behind people who feel
strongly about things, if only they could keep their pants on. Let me
illustrate what i mean by this.

He starts out pretty good, kinda strong, stresses the same pseudo-legal
concept over and over which is kinda tiresome, which retracts from it's
value as a persuasive argument, but then he says this:


My 91-year old mother has a second floor walk up in a Corpus Christi,
Texas condo. No elevator. She has a new car. She's never home when I
call her. She holds numerous offices in various lodges and churches.
According to the ordinance I've been found guilty of violating, she is
liable for the $75.00 fine and court costs I have been assessed. She
has a will of iron and could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. I doubt she
would pay the fine.


Whahuh? What does the 2nd floor walk up and new car have to do with
anything? You were pushing your bicycle because your mother is unavailable
- perhaps emotionally unavailable? I ask you, why would an eight foot tall
wookie want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks?! It does
not make sense!

Yes, I know he's saying technically his mother is liable, but I think
this is the precise point where he goes balls-out.

Whatever, dude. It sucks. You should have politely pushed to have it
reduced to a warning instead of haranguing the city about it. Once you
started turning it into a battle between good and evil you lost the ability
to say, "I realize that the city has a problem that they are attempting to
mitigate, and i regret that i have unwittingly exacerbated this problem.
But under the circumstances, given a confusing law that clearly needs to be
rewritten, and which has rarely been enforced, I plead for some clemency in
the interest of goodwill."

Or something. Anything but what he did, apparently.

"Eric Jorgensen" wrote in message
news:20050112101922.5ad5dad0@wafer...
On 12 Jan 2005 08:48:54 -0800
wrote:


Whahuh? What does the 2nd floor walk up and new car have to do with
anything? You were pushing your bicycle because your mother is unavailable
- perhaps emotionally unavailable? I ask you, why would an eight foot tall
wookie want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks?! It does
not make sense!

Hey no Chewbacca defence on this one okay?

Eric Jorgensen wrote:

...I ask you, why would an eight foot tall wookie want to live on Endor with a bunch
of two foot tall Ewoks?! It does not make sense!....

Let's not go there.

--
Tom Sherman - Near Rock Island

My 91-year old mother has a second floor walk up in a Corpus
Christi,
Texas condo. No elevator. [snip]

Whahuh? What does the 2nd floor walk up and new car have to do with
anything? You were pushing your bicycle because your mother is
unavailable - perhaps emotionally unavailable?

Uh, reading the OP carefully we note this sentence:

"Secondly, the only penalty called for is that the parent of the
offending party be fined."

And this one:

"According to the ordinance I've been found guilty of violating, [my
mother] is liable for the $75.00 fine and court costs I have been
assessed."

Heck, I posted the thing twice[1] . . . you'd think we could read it
once.

Ed is not referring to his mother in order to provide fodder for
amusing Star Wars references.

He's pointing out the absurdity of the fact that the law calls for his
*parents* to be fined because *he* was caught pushing his bike on the
sidewalk.

Ed is in his 60s and his mother is 91 . . .

Yes, the law is aimed at kids. Yes, it did get a big laugh in court
when Ed's lawyer brought this up . . .

--Brent
brent at brenthugh dot com
[1] BTW, sorry about that double post--some kind of googleburp . . .

Um, couldn't he have claimed to be _pulling_ his bicycle, and therefore
not subject to the law? I have to admit, that's a pretty dorky law. No
*riding* on some sidewalks makes sense, but when you're walking your
bike, you're just a pedestrian. Are other pedestrian activities
prohibited, too? On a sidewalk? I guess from now on he'll have to carry
his bicycle on that stretch.


--
blazingpedals

Eric Jorgensen wrote:
On 12 Jan 2005 08:48:54 -0800
wrote:

Ed Chasteen, a cyclist with multiple sclerosis, was charged with
"pushing a bicycle" in Lawson, Missouri, population 2300, in an
area where bicycle travel is prohibited both on the street
[snip]
Whatever, dude. It sucks. You should have politely pushed to have
it
reduced to a warning instead of haranguing the city about it. Once
you
started turning it into a battle between good and evil you lost the
ability
to say, "I realize that the city has a problem that they are
attempting to
mitigate, and i regret that i have unwittingly exacerbated this
problem.
But under the circumstances, given a confusing law that clearly needs
to be
rewritten, and which has rarely been enforced, I plead for some
clemency in
the interest of goodwill."

Or something. Anything but what he did, apparently.

Well, what isn't clear just from this article, is that some cyclists
were turned away with a warning a couple of months before this
incident. They were riding to a restaurant in the 'no bicycle zone' to
eat (small town, on of the few restaurants in town). So they did just
as you said, they took a warning from the police, didn't push the
point, and just left.

So then they did just as you said, started a polite dialogue with the
city and all that. They suggested the city had a real problem they
needed to solve but maybe there was a better way. And they thought they
had reached a position of compromise with the city, where they would
use the ordinance to stop kids from running haywire all over
Mainstreet, USA, but allow well behaved adult cyclists to patronize the
businesses.

After that, the police then turned away another large group of
bicyclists (planning to drop a few hundred $$$ at a local restaurant)
and that is when Ed decided to take a stand.

Now I'm the first to say that Ed isn't exactly in the middle of the
bell curve of stuff like this. Most of us just cowtow, knuckle under,
compromise our principles and all that. Ed doesn't.

But, to be honest, sometimes that is what it takes to make things
change.

Talking politely to city leaders got exactly nowhere. Explaining that
there are better ways to solve the problem went nowhere. Offering to
do a lot of stuff to help the situation out, for free got nowhere.
Even after Ed's ticket, when the city manager urged the city council to
take the matter under discussion and find a better solution, nothing
happened. When the city's prosecutor declined to prosecute the case
(essentially because he thought it was idiotic to prosecute a grown man
for breaking a law so obviously aimed at kids), still nothing happened.


They fired that prosecutor and hired another.

Local bicyclists continued to talk, and still nothing.

All this time, the local cyclists purposefully kept the rhetoric toned
down, tried to negotiate in good faith, didn't engage in massive
mail/email/fax campaigns, and so on. Low key, personal, actually
trying to find a solution that would satisfy everyone.

Finally, because Ed was taking a stand instead of just knuckling under,
the story hit the national media. Now the city is being snowed under
by mail & email from cyclists across the country.

Suddenly, there is a different story coming from the city and things
are changing.

So, yes, Ed's a little out there. Sometimes that's what it takes.
--Brent
brent at brenthugh dot com

SECTION 225.020: BICYCLE REGULATIONS

It's not made clear in any part of the story why this law exists to
create such a specific "no bicycle zone". Brent, do you know?

--
"Bicycling is a healthy and manly pursuit with much
to recommend it, and, unlike other foolish crazes,
it has not died out." -- The Daily Telegraph (1877)

It's not made clear in any part of the story why this law exists to
create such a specific "no bicycle zone". Brent, do you know?

The reason the Lawson city people give is something to do with kids
dangerously riding their bikes around the business district. One story
has a kid riding & the sidewalk and hitting and elderly lady. Another
story has kids riding along the street and "almost" getting hit by
someone backing out of a parking space (the business district has
diagonal parking along both sides of the street).

BTW, one of the points the local cyclists have continually made to the
city officials is that this is a legitimate problem but there are far
better solutions available, than just banning every single bicycle.

It's the old "toy bicycle syndrome" at work. Only kids ride bikes.
--Brent
brent at brenthugh dot com

wrote in message
oups.com...
It's not made clear in any part of the story why this law exists to
create such a specific "no bicycle zone". Brent, do you know?

The reason the Lawson city people give is something to do with kids
dangerously riding their bikes around the business district. One story
has a kid riding & the sidewalk and hitting and elderly lady. Another
story has kids riding along the street and "almost" getting hit by
someone backing out of a parking space (the business district has
diagonal parking along both sides of the street).

BTW, one of the points the local cyclists have continually made to the
city officials is that this is a legitimate problem but there are far
better solutions available, than just banning every single bicycle.

It's the old "toy bicycle syndrome" at work. Only kids ride bikes.
--Brent
brent at brenthugh dot com


This isn't a problem that requires an act of congress to remedy. Surely
reasonable adults can work this out. My guess is that somebody said
something that ****ed somebody off and everybody got their backs up. Trying
to make a national issue out of this probably isn't helpful.

My advice - Y'all be nice, sit down and work this out. Maybe someone needs
to admit they were wrong about something or make an apology for what they
said (doing this is becoming a requirement in our culture). Maybe the
restaurant owner who is missing out on his Saturday morning breakfast trade
might be the reasonable voice that brings everyone together. There is a
solution somewhere to be found in Lawson.

skip