Tampa police accused of unfairly targeting black bicyclists

Police in Tampa, Florida are disproportionately targeting bicyclists in black neighborhoods where officers allegedly issue an excessive number of bicycle tickets for mostly minor infractions, according to an investigation by the Tampa Bay Times. The police have countered the accusations, saying they are trying to look out for riders’ safety and help curb crime, the newspaper said.

The Times reported on Friday that in its analysis of more than 10,000 bicycle tickets issued by Tampa police during the last dozen years, 79 percent were given to black cyclists, even though black people only make up about a quarter of Tampa’s population.

The newspaper said the police are targeting residents of predominantly black neighborhoods and using “obscure subsections of a Florida statute,” issuing a large number of tickets for minor, run-of-the-mill bicycle infractions — failing to use lights when riding at night, riding without hands placed on handlebars or carrying a friend on handlebars.

“Officers use these minor violations as an excuse to stop, question and search almost anyone on wheels,” the investigation report reads. “The department doesn't just condone these stops, it encourages them, pushing officers who patrol high-crime neighborhoods to do as many as possible.”

The Times report added that Tampa has issued 2,504 bike tickets within the last three years — which the newspaper said was more than were given in the Florida cities of Jacksonville, Miami, St. Petersburg and Orlando combined.

But police say that they are targeting high-crime neighborhoods, and that by aggressively punishing bicycle violations, they’re helping to thwart further criminal activity.

“This is not a coincidence," Police Chief Jane Castor told the Times. "Many individuals receiving bike citations are involved in criminal activity." She added that the police had been so effective at stopping auto theft that bicycles had turned into “the most common mode of transportation for criminals."

The Tampa Bay Times investigation said that some of the bike tickets were indeed issued to criminals, but that just 20 percent of the people who received tickets in the last year were eventually arrested.

“If it’s not racial profiling, what is it?” the Times quoted Joyce Hamilton Henry, director of advocacy for the ACLU of Florida, as saying.

Castor released a statement last week in response to the investigation, saying the police were simply responding to criminal activity by writing citations “in the areas of the city where they recover the largest number of stolen bikes.”

She added that 76 percent of Tampa DUI arrests in the last year went to white men, but “that does not mean we are targeting white males, it simple means that we are addressing a crime pattern, not a demographic.”

Tampa is far from being the only city whose police have been accused of unfairly targeting minorities.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a report that police in Ferguson, Missouri had been unlawfully biased against black residents, an investigation it carried out in response to widespread outrage following the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager there last year by a white police officer.

Police in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City and Newark, New Jersey have also been accused of disproportionately targeting black people in their stop-and-arrest practices.