Jaywalking, Murder ... Six in one hand ...

Don't get me wrong. I have all the respect in the world for police officers. For the most part, they put their lives on the line to protect their communities, and they receive relatively low pay for doing it.

My problem is that with all of the major crimes they have to deal with, why do they have to impart their wrath on us jaywalkers, as if we're common criminals?

I was in San Diego a few years ago, talking to my wife on my cell phone, when I came up to a DO NOT WALK signal. I checked both ways and noticed there wasn't a car coming from any direction. I also noticed that if I had fallen forward that I would have been across the street. So, I took my life in to my own hands and headed across the vast thoroughfare.

I wasn't more than two feet past the street when I heard the siren. A cop was pulling me over -- on foot. I was still talking to my wife and kept walking because, being from Chicago, I had no idea that the siren was turned on because I crossed the street.

The cop comes up to me and tells me about my serious infraction, but what he was most upset about was that I did it right in front of him with a large group of people around -- he said he was basically forced to stop me. I let him know I was from Chicago and that if I didn't cross the street against a red light there, that even the cops would think I'm an idiot.

It turned out he was cool about it -- he had me come by his car and acted like he was writing me a ticket, so that the rubber necks wouldn't think I was getting special treatment.

My question is, why even write a ticket? I'm not from California, and there was no way I was going to pay the ticket if I was given one. What would they have done? Put a Denver Boot on my foot, so that I couldn't walk anywhere? And, my guess is the state of Illinois wouldn't have extradited me back to California to face the charges, so why even bother.

It's time to take jaywalking off the rule books, and make people responsible for their own actions. If they are dumb enough to get hit while crossing the street, let them deal with the consequences.

RoadRage