First, a reminder: tomorrow is primary day! Go vote!
Now, let’s talk about the ATVs. You know, the 4-wheelers making noise and doing tricks on the road now that the weather has turned nice in Camden. This week, local officials at the city and state levels rolled out new legislation and enforcement:
CAMDEN, NJ — South Jersey officials with ties to Camden are aiming for steeper penalties in stifling a widespread issue of illegal off-road vehicle use.
Representatives from the 5th Legislative District announced plans Friday to back long-stalled bill updates to state law that will increase fines and impoundment lengths for each offense of operating an ATV, dirt bike, or snowmobile on public streets.
State Senator Nilsa Cruz-Perez is co-sponsoring legislation brought forward by Democratic colleague Shirley K. Turner (15th District), most recently in a 2018 session as S1852. Assemblyman William Spearman and Assemblywoman Patricia Egan Jones will mirror the bill in the state Assembly.
Like many of my neighbors and friends, I’m worried about ATV use. But maybe for different reasons.
I understand that these ATVs are unsafe for drivers, others on the road, and cause property damage. I also know they make a lot of noise, and have been a real problem in local parks. But I’m not sure increased enforcement is the right approach.
Three quick arguments against increased enforcement:
- I’ve been in Camden long enough to see this issue cycle through a couple of times. Police have tried cracking down on ATVs, but it turns out catching ATV riders is quite unsafe as well. Property damage and other health risks go up in these high risk chases, which is why the police stopped enforcing ATVs previously. In the past, this hasn’t been effective.
- In general, prohibition strategies haven’t been good for young men of color. The arguments that they should just follow the law are strikingly familiar to similar arguments about drugs and alcohol (or graffiti, which I’ll get to below). There are real risks to prohibition, which include creating a culture where illegal activity is mainstreamed but unregulated. In Goffman’s problematic but still important book On the Run she talks about a subculture of young men who largely function outside of the law because of enforcement, probation, fines and other challenges that result from mass incarceration. In her book, young men run from the police because they have outstanding fines, suspended licenses, probation violations from the web of bureaucracy surrounding mass incarceration, and can’t risk an encounter with the police. It’s just too risky to engage in legal society when there are so many bureaucratic ways to going back to jail. I worry that increasing enforcement on ATVs will amplify this effect. I’d rather us be working to figure out ways to bring that population into a legal system, getting them driver’s licenses and voting rights, then continuing to create enforcement that furthers these issues.
- Lastly, and this is the most controversial of these points I imagine, we need to seriously consider the ways ATVs play into local culture. That’s complicated. Much local art doesn’t have side effects like this. It isn’t specifically in tension with local parks, it rarely physically endangers either the artist or others in the community. That’s real. It’s also true that ATVs and motor bike tricks play a role in local hip-hop culture. Below is a clip from the 2014 remix of Camden artist Apollo Ali’s Rio de Janeiro. I’ve written before about how Camden needs to find ways to celebrate its informal arts culture. That’s certainly easier to do with issues like graffiti that come with less health and property risk, but it’s worth considering here how the culture would interact with increased enforcement. I suspect ATV tricks are popular in part because they are risky — increasing enforcement potentially increases risks, while at the same time pushing ATVs farther out of the community.
Let me give an example: the Metro Police are showing impoundments of ATVs on their twitter feed and actively encouraging residents to turn in other residents via an app.
This ATV was impounded last night at 10th and State St. If you know where off-road vehicles are being operated dangerously in your neighborhood and where they are being parked, send us an anonymous tip through the @STOPitSolutions app. pic.twitter.com/cvFbncG1Ji
— Camden County Police (@CamdenCountyPD) June 2, 2019
Now, imagine ATVs have been a problem in your local park. As a resident, you might want to talk to the young men and encourage them not to ride in the park because it’s also their community. This is a much preferable option to enforcement; it builds social capital and may help ensure that these young men consider community when engaging in other risky behaviors. But the enforcement approach makes this strategy almost impossible. ATV riders will fear that their neighbor will turn them into authorities. Further, they’re more incentivized to hide their ownership of the ATVs, meaning community members are less likely to even know who it was that rode through the park. Combine that with the fact that in the past these crackdowns haven’t done much to stop the activity in previous iterations, and enforcement may actually make things worse. It makes community solutions harder, and increases the riskiest behaviors because the stakes of getting caught are so high. Suddenly, ATV riders are hiding their vehicles, going out at night when there are fewer witnesses, and running from the police.
This is a tough one, and I don’t have a clean policy answer — it’s not clear community strategies can mitigate the problem. But I think we have enough evidence of cities using no tolerance approaches to be skeptical. We’ve seen how prohibiting illegal activities can result in unintended consequences, particularly for this demographic. We’ve seen how prohibition pushes these activities and people further away from community and community norms. That’s why I’m nervous about the new ATV enforcement strategy, even though so many folks I respect see this as a step forward.
(And a big thanks to the folks who have been having discussion on this with me behind the scenes. Much appreciated!)
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