In Jacksonville, walking while black can come at a high price

In a June viral video, a young black man named Devonte Shipman captured his interaction with police officers in Jacksonville, Florida, as they dealt him two tickets with hefty fines: one for jaywalking, and another for walking without an ID. (Which, to be clear, is not an actual law for pedestrians.) It raised the question: How often does this happen? And how often do these citations fall along the lines of race and poverty?

In their latest investigation, ProPublica reporter Topher Sanders and Florida Times-Union reporter Ben Conarck analyzed five years of pedestrian citation data from Duval County. They found that walking in Jacksonville can come at a high price, especially if you’re black or poor.

If you’re living in the city’s three poorest zip codes, you’re nearly six times more likely to receive a pedestrian citation. And if you’re black, you’re nearly three times more likely to receive a pedestrian violation than white people. Police cite safety as the goal of these efforts, but urban planning experts agree that citations are simply not an effective way to change behavior or bring down pedestrian deaths. For that, you’d need to rethink Jacksonville’s infrastructure — one that’s sorely lacking safe options for pedestrians.

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