Blogger: Police shadow Critical Mass bike ride
June 28, 2008 at 10:42 am by Andisheh Nouraee in NewsBlogger Shelby Highsmith (who blogs as Shelbinator) reports yesterday’s Critical Mass group bicycle ride around Atlanta was shadowed by more than a dozen Atlanta Police Department vehicles.
If you were robbed, mugged, or otherwise assaulted or injured in the downtown Atlanta area between 6:45 and 8:00pm on Friday, we bicyclists do apologize for your lack of police protection. You see, we were busy occupying about a dozen motorcycle cops and several police cruisers with our monthly bike ride.
Be sure to check out Shelby’s video.
Atlanta is an under-policed city experiencing a double-digit increase in serious crime. Is following and ticketing bike riders a responsible allocation of the police department’s resources?
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June 28th, 2008 at 11:01 am
So once a month a large group of people break the law and create a safety hazard for all of us en masse by blowing through red lights in the heart of Atlanta? I just hope this isn’t the only time the police take action.
If one of the people ticketed was the sunofabitch bicyclist who blasted through the red light at Peachtree and 17th this Thursday evening and almost hit me and my little boy while we were pedestriatin’ across the road during a legal crossing signal, I say huzzah and yippee squeak.
June 28th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Actually Darin, untwist your panties — the monthly critical mass ride is probably the *safest* time we’re on the road, because we stick together and can’t get picked off easily by psychotic road-raging drivers. We don’t run red lights when we approach them, but if we’re halfway through an intersection when the light changes, we don’t stop and split up the mass. Once cars get intermixed among portions of the mass is when things get dangerous.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
It seems to me that a better approach would be for police to cycle along with the riders. Hell, it’d probably even build relations. Having pockets of officers located along the route seems like it creates more of an “us vs. them” mentality.
June 29th, 2008 at 12:50 am
I don’t know if it was pockets along the route, Thomas. There generally isn’t a route until 2 minutes before we get on our bikes, and even then it’s more about what neighborhoods in what order. This was probably one set of police following us around and darting ahead of us whenever they could extrapolate our route.
There will be a “Courteous Mass” on Friday, 7/11. Probably won’t be anywhere near as many riders, but they will be observing all traffic laws and such. We’ll see if this is any better on traffic, law enforcement, and the tiny tiny senses of humor of impatient Atlanta motorists.
June 29th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Re: “we stick together and can’t get picked off easily by psychotic road-raging drivers.” Ahh, well that I can understand. As someone who spends a great deal of time as a pedestrian in midtown, I do know the dangers of aggressive ATL drivers.
Anyway, best of luck. And if you see some cranky old dude with twisted panties trying to cross the road with his little boy, be sure to give him the right of way ;)
June 29th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Darin’s reaction is widely held by the general public and by myself. I first heard of Critical Mass as a guerilla group who felt that the activism of snarling San Francisco traffic would help them draw media attention for cycling issues.
Critical Mass is problematic as a vehicle of accomplishing public acceptance of bikes on the road and making gains in infrastructure for us because of the VERY negative impression they leave on the genreal, IE voting, public.
BTW, I am an avid road and mountian biking addict (temporarily in remission, except for iding my single around Midtown) with about 15 years on the saddle and thousands of miles on the road.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:11 am
All I know is I came upon two tastefully clad cyclers on Bouldercrest in East Atlanta on Saturday, riding side-by-side instead of in single file and almost caused a calamity when I tried to pass them. I couldn’t help but laugh when the outer cyclist, clearly feeling comfortable as a traffic cop and not compelled to fall into single file, waved me past him when the coast was clear. Thanks, officer!