New Paltz village trustees have undertaken a line-by-line review of their entire municipal code to see exactly what officers are being asked to do in terms of law enforcement. Thus far, that review — being conducted by deputy mayor KT Tobin and trustee Alexandria Wojcik — has turned up references under noise, open containers, mass gatherings and jaywalking. Some of the laws largely repeat what’s already in state or other rules, but the crux of the exercise is to reconsider when it’s necessary to send an armed person to resolve an issue.
Police are mentioned 17 times in reference to noise control, according to the data compiled. Noise complaints in the village pit people with different schedules — and often of different ages — against one another. A review of the village noise ordinance last decade was complicated when then-trustee Brian Kimbiz opposed it on behalf of college students, musicians and others who make much of their sound after dark. The idea that daytime construction noise should be allowed when nighttime entertainment is not was described as arbitrary. Prosecutions of noise complaints that would hold up in court are a challenge.
The trustees also took note of June 21 video footage, in which a man marching to show support for officer Robert Sisco advised sergeant Keith Lewis of an intent to pursue a noise complaint against counter-protesters using a louder sound system than his side had. Controlling noise can also be classified under disorderly conduct.
Laws prohibiting open containers of alcohol are being viewed as part of the broken-windows policing philosophy, seen as impacting members of minority populations disproportionately. The research by trustees indicates that such laws were passed when those forbidding public intoxication were found unconstitutional because they hit homeless and other poor people without access to a private space particularly hard. Public safety is, again, already addressed via the law against disorderly conduct. Court rulings require the suspect exhibit intent to consume the beverage, and courts have determined that local police have been arresting people illegally under this statute.
It’s all a complex business. Chief Robert Lucchesi of the New Paltz town police has observed that part of the process of reforming police needs to be to reconsider how police are used.
Wojcik said at the July 22 village-board meeting that more work is needed in other areas as well, such as laws regulating mass gatherings and jaywalking. On the former, Wojcik and Tobin are looking to the Ithaca code to craft a law that will focus on safety and respect for the rights of all, rather than privilege some by requiring permission be sought.
The history of jaywalking suggests that it might not truly fit into the “complete streets” philosophy. As chronicled by Peter Norton in the book Fighting Traffic: the Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, streets were considered public spaces into the 1920s, with people walking where they wished, and automobile drivers publicly shamed and blamed if they were inattentive enough to strike someone.
In the wake of an effort in Cincinnati to require speed governors on cars, manufacturers first created the concept of jaywalking, and then developed a campaign that included both advertising and articles about crashes that re-framed the narrative to put the people not in the high-speed machines at fault when they were injured or killed. The term “jaywalking” was coined to suggest that only unsophisticated people would walk on a public road.
Change is in the air. Some conclusions about village laws that refer to the police will soon be forthcoming, a useful step in the broader discussion of local law enfocement.
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