According to Chicago Municipal Code in certain Districts, " No person 12 or more years of age shall ride a bicycle upon any sidewalk,violators are subject to arrest." Rogers Park is a participating district in which you see a lot of these signs posted.
As a Resident of Rogers Park, I am fully aware of the open drug market on Morse street. There are probably a ton of drug corners other than this one, but I will use this one for the purpose of example. Living in this area I noticed that a lot of the dealers use bicycles to make their transactions. There are usually two dealers on bikes, three hanging out in front of the Golden Mini-Mart. They've spot a buyer, a bike courier drives up and picks up the product from the holder and whisks off to make the transaction.
I looked up at the sign today and finally put two and two together. For a lot of cops it is difficult to even have reasonable suspicion to stop these dealers, having the "no bicycle on sidewalk law", enables cops to bypass the law. They can stop the individual on the basis of illegally bike riding on the sidewalk, this allows them to "Stop and Frisk" therefore giving the cop plenty of probable cause.
Sure this helps cops catch our bad guys, but how many other laws or codes are targeted at helping law enforcement bypass our fundamental rights, like our right against unlawful search and seizures.
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