Norfolk’s police chief has ordered his officers to stop seizing unregistered bicycles, after a NewsChannel 3 investigation showed the little-known law was being enforced almost exclusively in low income neighborhoods.
Bike registration laws such as Norfolk’s are supposedly to target bike-riding thieves, drug dealers, and unruly drunks riding between house parties. But such laws leave too much room for pretextual stops and selective enforcement, raising questions of biased policing and racial profiling.
Kudos to NewsChannel 3 for their excellent coverage of this issue, and to the Tidewater Bicycling Association and the League of American Bicyclists for speaking up for cyclist’s rights.
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