CA only - AB 1047 - prohibit use of funds for M/C only enforcement

[DangerMoney]

From another forum:

AB 1047 is scheduled to be heard in Committee in January (most likely on January 9, 2012).

Reminder - AB 1047, authored by Assembly Member Kevin Jeffries, will prohibit the use of any Federal, State or other highway safety funds to be used for selective motorcycle-only enforcement violations.

Our first CTA regarding AB 1047 is to send the California State Assembly Committee on Transportation a letter urging their support of AB 1047.

Per Craig DeLuz, Assembly Member Kevin Jeffries' Capitol Director, hand-written letters have the biggest impact, followed closely by a typewritten letter. In both cases the letter should be personally signed and mailed in a hand-addressed envelope.

In an effort to keep our legislators honest, it would be great to track the number of letters that are actually mailed. We are requesting that each club submit copies of their letters to their clubs' respective Primary or Alternate Contact. Please submit copies to Major Tom at the next COC meeting. Or, if you prefer, mail them to:

Major Tom
1025 E Renwick Road
Glendora, CA 91730

US Defenders is urging clubs to send letters immediately to:

Honorable Bonnie Lowenthal, Chair
California State Assembly Committee of Transportation
State Capitol, Room 3152
Sacramento, CA 95814

Please also send a copy of the your letter to:

Honorable Kevin Jeffries, Vice Chair
California State Assembly Committee of Transportation
State Capitol, Room 5128
Sacramento, CA 95814


SUMMARY


Motorcyclists are being singled out as a group and profiled for
stops by police and cited for subjective equipment and other
violations using the motorcyclists' "safety" as an excuse.
Many of these are
motorcycle-only enforcement stops and
checkpoints by law enforcement agencies.
This discriminatory enforcement activity was almost nonexistent,
before a few years ago, when the State Office of
Traffic Safety (OTS) started awarding financial grants to state
law enforcement agencies to concentrate on what they thought
were legitimate targets for increased or special enforcement,
like DUI checkpoints, etc. Increasingly, the target of these
enforcement efforts are ONLY motorcyclists.
In turn, the OTS awards grant money given to it by the federal
government for improving motorcyclist safety through
training and education programs and motorist awareness
initiatives, not for subjective discriminatory checkpoints for
motorcycle riders only.


BACKGROUND


Last year, in Georgia, New York and several others,
aggressive state law enforcement agencies set up roadside
checkpoints and cited
ONLY motorcyclists with the primary
goal of hassling motorcycle operators and their passengers.
We originally introduced this bill to prohibit these types of
checkpoints in California.
However, the OTS and the NHTSA have been issuing grant
money to the CHP and local law enforcement agencies to
conduct "motorcycle safety programs" that have resulted in
many of our state law enforcement agencies in citing and
checking motorcycles ONLY. For example, the Citrus Heights
Police Department illegally used this grant money to purchase
sound equipment to do profiling harassment of motorcycle for
loud pipes. (Please see attached articles of the misuse of grant
money that has been used in the name of promoting
motorcycle safety for enforcement only uses.)
This should be defined in the bill as a misuse of public monies

and will be prosecuted by the state Attorney General.


THIS BILL


Assembly Bill 1047
1. Will prohibit the use of any federal, state or other
highway safety funds to be used for selective motorcycle
enforcement violations, but instead, to be used for their
intended purpose of motorcycle safety training and education
and motorist awareness of motorcyclists.
2. Will prohibit any law enforcement agency to have
a motorcycle "safety" enforcement program that targets and
profiles motorcyclists as a "group." This bill will prohibit
motorcycle-only stops.
3. An additional requirement would be to have any
state law enforcement department or agency that chooses to
accept grant money from federal sources, California (OTS),
cities or counties to use a portion of that money received to
compile a certified monthly report, listing the number of
motorcycles stopped and cited, and the number of other
vehicles stopped, warned or cited to be submitted to the Senate
and Assembly Transportation Committee for their assessment
of the law enforcement agencies' compliance with 2. and 3
above.
FOR MORE INFORMATION


Craig DeLuz, Capitol Director
State Capitol, Rm. 5128
(916) 319-2066
Fax (916) 319-2166
craig.deluz@asm.ca.gov

[kevin_stevens]

I hate narrowly crafted legislation like this.  Why couldn't they have generalized it to prohibit targeted enforcement of *any* kind?  Next they'll have to have a separate law for ricer exhaust targeting, and skateboard targeting, and etc. ad infinitum.

 

KeS

[Playinthestreet]

Citrus Heights used the money illegally to harass motorcycles with loud pipes?  GOOD FOR THEM!  I'd like to see more enforcement of quality of life ordinances.

[Rogue]

I'm with them on the loud pipes thing.

I was riding my bicycle last week and this guy with Ape-Hangers went by me with open pipes.  My ears were ringing for the rest of the day.  That motherfker!  It was so loud that I swerved instinctively to avoid it!  It sounded like gunfire, only continuous!  Often enough though other riders have such loud pipes (though not open like this last clown) that it still hurts the ears pretty badly.

Unbelievable!  

Sorry but there are a lot of riders out there who just go overboard and don't give a shit about how it negatively affects others.  I'm all for Motorcycle-only enforcement when it comes to that kind of violation because we are talking about physical hearing damage here!

[Kootenanny]

Per Craig DeLuz, Assembly Member Kevin Jeffries' Capitol Director, hand-written letters have the biggest impact, followed closely by a typewritten letter. In both cases the letter should be personally signed and mailed in a hand-addressed envelope.
So, if you're either too poor to own a computer and printer, or never learned to type, your opinion has more weight?

[cbsnbiker]

Per Craig DeLuz, Assembly Member Kevin Jeffries' Capitol Director, hand-written letters have the biggest impact, followed closely by a typewritten letter. In both cases the letter should be personally signed and mailed in a hand-addressed envelope.
So, if you're either too poor to own a computer and printer, or never learned to type, your opinion has more weight?

It actually makes sense.

The idea is that you're not just rubberstamping someone else's prewritten letter, or --worse -- one entity is not generating many copies of a letter and trying to pass them off as original thoughts from multiple citizens. Instead, they want to see your original letter with your own thoughts from you.

In the same way, if the legislator (or, to be more precise, the aides) reads one original letter, and a hundred copies of the same text, the former will have much more weight than any one of the latter.

[steve.ski]

I'm with them on the loud pipes thing.

I was riding my bicycle last week and this guy with Ape-Hangers went by me with open pipes.  My ears were ringing for the rest of the day.  That motherfker!  It was so loud that I swerved instinctively to avoid it!  It sounded like gunfire, only continuous!  Often enough though other riders have such loud pipes (though not open like this last clown) that it still hurts the ears pretty badly.

Unbelievable!  

Sorry but there are a lot of riders out there who just go overboard and don't give a shit about how it negatively affects others.  I'm all for Motorcycle-only enforcement when it comes to that kind of violation because we are talking about physical hearing damage here!

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