Mayor Steve Noble has asked the common council to repeal a section of the city code mandating that all bicycles be registered with the city, saying that the decades-old statute is obsolete and prone to abuse.
“It’s a very old law,” said Noble. “And it doesn’t really serve any useful purpose.”
Noble said that he requested the council repeal the 1984 law after hearing from bicyclists and community justice advocates. Both groups complained about the virtually unknown requirement. In other jurisdictions, Noble said, bike registration rules had been used by police as a pretext for what would otherwise be an unlawful stop.
“We’ve heard of police, not in Kingston, but in some places, aggressively using these types of laws to basically do stop-and-frisk,” said Noble.
Noble’s repeal request will go before the Common Council’s Laws and Rules Committee. The committee will take up the issue later this month.
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