Dear Mother Tribune, send bail money

A reporter finds that covering an environmental protest on a bicycle in the City of Angels during convention week makes for a ticket without a party

By Flynn McRoberts

Tribune Staff Writer

August 17, 2000 12:26 a.m. CDT

LOS ANGELES -- Your Honor, if I may address the court of public opinion, I would just like to say this about being busted by the Los Angeles Police Department for riding my bike while reporting on a demonstration:

I can't imagine this happening in Chicago, where our cycle-loving mayor has painted bike lanes on city streets, and police each month permit the same type of group ride that landed me in the Los Angeles County Jail on Tuesday night.

And I don't suppose Philadelphia's finest would have responded to 60 bicyclists carrying provocative signs such as "More Bikes, Less Cars" as the L.A. cops did: "Put the bikes down!" they thundered. "Don't use the kickstands!"

After all, at the recent Republican National Convention, Philadelphia's popular police commissioner, John Timoney, directed his restrained force from the seat of a mountain bike.

But my eight hours in the custody of the LAPD and the county jail seems all too appropriate.

What could be more fitting than getting arrested and cited for "reckless driving" of a bike in a city with three major problems: clogged traffic, the resulting pollution and a police department with one nasty reputation for dealing with the public?

The ride was called a "Critical Mass" event, held during the convention to promote bicycling as a way to relieve traffic congestion and pollution. Before it began, an organizer told the gathered cyclists to "obey the laws out there" and "stay safe." He also announced a "jail support number" in case of arrest.

Among those duly noting it was Mimi LaValley, a pleasant, 19-year-old activist from L.A.

"We're challenging corporate greed that says there needs to be more cars on the street," LaValley said, "and consumerism that says everyone needs to drive their own car." Besides, she added, "this is a socially responsible way to commute."

Cmdr. David Kalish of the LAPD alleged in a Wednesday morning news conference that I "had committed all the same violations that the other people did."

This is true, if he was referring to stopping at red lights, going through intersections as police or crossing guards stopped side-street traffic, and being escorted by two dozen L.A. bike cops.

Many pedestrians cheered, and car drivers honked in support as the cyclists made their way through L.A.'s oddly empty downtown streets at rush hour.

Some riders held signs with sayings such as "One Less Car," or "The Revolution will not be Motorized."

After about 30 minutes, I began dictating notes to a colleague with a cell phone -- not the safest bicycling method, I admit -- and described how a dozen squad cars suddenly raced in and blocked our path as the bicycle cops peeled away.

Then about 20 LAPD motorcycle officers appeared and steered us down a side street, but one of them smiled and assured me: "We like bicycles. We're here to escort you." That made sense, because it was an officially sanctioned demonstration.

Less than two minutes later, as we approached an underpass, police suddenly swarmed around us and shouted, "Put the bikes down!"

One commanding officer said, "Calm down. Calm down."

"I am calm," said Juliet Musso, a professor of public policy at USC who had reluctantly joined the ride with her husband.

"I know," he replied. "I'm talking to my colleagues."

Several younger officers were shouting and menacing the cyclists. But a middle-aged commander assured us: "Don't worry. Everything is going to be all right."

With their hands on their holstered batons, officers in riot gear told us to get "up against the fence!"

Still, except for a few, the officers were professional in handling our arrest.

They cuffed us behind our backs with hard plastic "flex cuffs" and kept us at the fence under the overpass for an hour or so.

After noticing my press credentials, one gentlemanly officer assured me that I'd get off with a "minuscule fine."

Then he asked, "What are you covering here?"

"Protests and demonstrations," I said.

An eager young cop walking with us inquired: "So are we containing this better than they did in Philly?"

Not wanting to perturb anyone there who was armed and not handcuffed, I measured my words carefully.

"In Philadelphia, they let marchers take over the streets and block traffic for hours," I told him. "It wasn't until a small number of anarchists started bashing police cars that they did move in, and forcefully."

He smirked.

Nearby, some protesters began to gather beyond the police lines and offer an earnest, if amusing chant: "Ride your bike! Go to jail!"

Standing with my face against a brick wall, I got a little nervous when a bomb squad officer arrived to search our backpacks.

I made sure to tell him that mine contained a gas mask -- a precaution for covering the protests -- so he wouldn't be surprised.

After another hour, officers led us onto a Los Angeles County Sheriff's prisoner van for a trip to the county jail.

Waiting in the sheriff's bus for an hour or so -- hands still cuffed -- the protesters got a little giddy, singing Happy Birthday to someone named Scott who turned 32 on Tuesday.

The driver cranked the bus stereo. On came "Two Tickets to Paradise" by Eddie Money, the '80s rocker who once worked for a police department.

"We've waited so long, waited so long," Money sang as we stewed in the bus.

A sense of camaraderie worked its way through the bus, but so did an unnerving rumor: that running three or more red lights on a bike might be a felony.

Needless to say, the long wait in the bus gave us plenty of time to get acquainted.

Jonathan Aurthur, 52, told how his boss had warned him that morning about demonstrators at the Republican convention who had stripped in lockup so cops couldn't identify them in protest videotapes by their clothes.

"Don't protest in the nude," she told him. "In L.A. they'll arrest you anyway."

Once we arrived at the jail, we were searched -- not stripped, but the officers made certain we weren't hiding anything anywhere.

It wasn't rough treatment; just the stern bureaucracy of a jail. And for every overly macho guard, there were others like the one who patiently helped an arrestee.

The young man had a mess of green and black dreadlocks, and the officer spent more than 15 minutes chatting with him and helping pick beads out of his hair as a security measure.

Finally, after guards fingerprinted and took my mug shot ("McRoberts, Flynn, DNC Inmate"), a commanding officer led me to an empty holding cell, sat me down and asked me what the heck I was doing there.

I told him I was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune assigned to cover the convention protests.

He looked at me sternly and said, "That's not what we were told."

My heart stopped. Images of "Midnight Express" -- where an American languishes in a Turkish prison -- flashed through my mind.

"We were told you worked for the L.A. Times," he said ominously.

I chuckled and said, "Well, we merged with them several months ago, so we're all part of the same family."

Most of my fellow bicyclists -- 70 adults and one juvenile in all -- had to spend the night in jail until their arraignments.

The truly honorable thing for me to do would have been to insist on the same treatment -- a la John McCain in the Hanoi Hilton.

But I had my own mission. I asked a sheriff's deputy if I would be out by 9 a.m. Wednesday because I was supposed to cover a march against police brutality. He suggested convention-floor duty would be a better idea.

On Wednesday, I got my property back -- except for the rented bike, which was being held as "evidence," police told me.

After realizing that police had wrongly cited us -- for "reckless driving," a violation that doesn't apply to bike riders -- the city attorney's office altered the charges. Like the others, I'm facing a misdemeanor charge of "obstructing a public way" and two traffic infractions.

In any case, I couldn't help but remember something Mimi LaValley, the teenage bike activist, told me before the ride.

"My message to drivers out there," she said, "is: There's a better way."

The same message might be sent to the LAPD.

Flynn McRoberts is a Tribune staff writer assigned to cover the convention protests.

Given the scientific facts concerning the altered climate of the earth, the only thing that isn't crazy in Los Angeles at the moment is the Critical Mass bicycle ride. The reduction of auto emissions, which directly contributes to the re-stabilization of the planet's climate, makes sane sense...in contrast to the American social hallucination taking place inside of the Staples Center. Bike on!