car starts to weave into your lane, you knock/bang to get their attention... they are a cop...

I saw a car stoped askew and a bicyclist down when I got to Desplanes and Washington this morning. I recognized the cyclist as someone whom I had passed a bit further back on Milwaukee and who must have then passed me up again when I stopped to fidget with my chain. I was amazed to see a police office already there until I realized that the cyclist was in handcuffs. I didn't actually witness what happened but from hearing what the cyclist was saying and what the officer was telling dispatch on his cell phone and what a witness who did actually see some of this said something similar to the following must have occurred:

The officer was off duty, likely on his way home from work in his own civilian car.

the cyclist was riding in the bike lane on des planes.

The officer was weaving lanes a bit and driving a bit aggressively (according to the cyclist and the witness the officer said he was stopped and not moving to the on duty officer who arrived later but had indicated he was in motion when initially calling dispatch)

A witness showed up who said she saw the cop weaving as he drove and asked if she should stay to give her information the cop told her that he did not need her information and she could (/should) go. The cyclist said he did need her information and she should stay. This was a red flag that caused me to stick around. I got her number on two of my business cards and tried to give the cyclist one. The officer told me I could not give someone who was under arrest anything, I said its just a business card. He took the business card from me.  I told the cyclist I would post something to thechainlink.org so he can locate me if he doesn't still have her info. in the hopes of making this searchable I'm putting his name in the Tags, but I do not know if I have the spelling correct.

The bicyclist says he saw the officer weave a bit into the bike lane and knocked or banged on the car to alert the officer to his presence, the degree of force used for this knock was of some discussion ('a light tap?' 'no, loud enough that he could hear me' - 'he banged on my car hard, for no reason I was stopped')

Clearly blood was running hot, voices were raised but everyone was civil enough.

The cyclist asked what he was under arrest for the officer cited 'reckless conduct' or something vague and could not cite a statute number. The cyclist said he is a  lawyer, threats of lawsuits for improper arrest/detainment were issued.

What a mess...

For what its worth:

I don't think any cyclist bangs on windows unprovoked. Your hand is worth more than the glass and is more breakable, that's pretty clear even when road rage of getting cut off runs high.

The cop probably was tired coming off a hard shift doing thankless work and did not have any patience left.

No damage was visible to the car or the cyclist.

I'm glad no one got hurt, but what are you supposed to do when a car cuts into the bike lane... and its an off duty cop!

If you are the cyclist, and you need the witnesses phone number, call me at: tree one too, cinco quarto tres, eighty seven, 41.

I wrote this up within an hour of what I saw, but I arrived too late to see the events leading up to the arrest and even now my memory grows fuzzy... I wish my gopro hadn't been out of batteries, or that the cyclist had had one. ugh.

Streetsblog article http://chi.streetsblog.org/2015/11/09/cyclist-arrested-by-allegedly...

Most recent Streetsblog article: http://chi.streetsblog.org/2015/11/13/witness-officer-drove-reckles...

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Permalink Reply by Tandemonium on October 17, 2015 at 8:39am

So, this cop actually switched lanes and then cut James off to stop him. Then he parks it in a cross walk. Then blocks traffic for the next hour, in rush hour, waiting for the on-duty police. You must have a real road rage problem to exhibit this kind of behavior. Makes me wonder if the cop is the sort who drives like that just to create a situation when he is still in uniform.

Side question: Is it illegal to run from an off-duty cop? Why should James have even stopped? If a private citizen gets out of their car to confront me I'm probably just going to ride away.

Permalink Reply by Steve G on October 17, 2015 at 8:44am

Cops have their authority 24 hours a day, so yeah, it's illegal.

Permalink Reply by Tom A.K. on October 17, 2015 at 8:44am
Yasmeen said,
"that a knock on a car is consided to be so horrible, so offensive that it is somehow worse than hurting a person? So many comments on the DNAinfo article seem so much more focused on the tapping on a car panel (how dare that cyclist touch the car??) than the scary driving that was putting lives in danger."

A BIG +1 !

'Entitled' drivers in their three-ton SUV's steel cage of protection dare to be irrationally outraged by the possibility of the finish of their precious vehicle being touched, over the flesh of a human being being crushed by that same metal from their reckless, careless, and inattentive distracted driving !
Permalink Reply by Ben R. on October 17, 2015 at 10:39am

I think it is indeed a problem and maybe there's some way to fix it. I'm not smart enough to figure it out. However, I doubt the productive way to address it is for the comments on this site to be a 'rant about those bleeping entitled suv drivers' and the DNAinfo articles' comments section to be a 'rant about those beeping entitled bicyclists'. I think like most things in life we need to recognize what we can control, what we can not control. Do what we can about what we can control while trying to avoid being pulverized by those things we can't control. Maybe the best thing to do is to try to post the other site's perspective in a somewhat calm measured manner to the other in the hopes of creating a real dialogue rather than just the usual polarized internet postings to their choir.

I'm of the opinion that the cyclist was very much more in the right than the wrong on this which is part of why I stopped and did what I could at the time, but I find most of my comments here I find I am playing the devil's advocate to explain how and why the driver probably felt and acted the way they did, however wrong it was from a more objective point of view.

Permalink Reply by Tom A.K. on October 19, 2015 at 8:14am
Ben Raines said, "we need to recognize what we can control, and what things we can't control. "

Ben, I hope that you (or someone like you), are on the scene for me and other cyclists when a incident like this, or a road rage type incident happens, because there are still enough of the out control aggressive drivers who act out against cyclists everyday out there. The perspective of many of these types of aggressive drivers is, that they resent us and don't even want us on the road at all. I don't believe that any amount of calm measured dialogue to them,(while understanding their perspective) can get through enough to change their aggressive attitudes towards us, except for an enforcement crackdown on their reckless, careless, and inattentive distracted driving. This is the only way the 'human' nature of their actions can be dealt with, but it is obviously not realistically possible. So, that is the ongoing nature of our conflict. We must make the best of our situation and realistically and lawfully assert our rights to the road.
Permalink Reply by Joe Guzzardo on October 18, 2015 at 2:49am

Not just SUV's. I've read here and had conversations with others about people in their Ultimate Driving Machines. This is the third time I've posted this image here, I just can't resist:

Permalink Reply by Ben R. on October 19, 2015 at 5:30am

As I've been thinking a lot about this whole thing this past week, I realized there are probably 2 reasons that so many comments focus on the 'touching of the car' one is that motorist can identify with not paying 100% attention to driving and unwittingly drifting over the lane ling in an 'unintentional' and thus forgivable manner, they see the touching of the car as a 'willful retaliation' rather than a reactionary 'oh my god please don't kill me' gesture. The other is that for better or worse, there are a number of motorists that see 'so many bikes running red lights' and don't have any frame of reference for that behavior that they immediately side with the motorist. the way that the headline of the article at DNAinfo is worded doesn't make it clear that at the time of the tap there was no way of knowing that the guy driving was a cop and that there was no police duty cause for the driver to be over that line. If they skimmed the article or just listened to the audio portion they might not really be understanding the full situation.

Permalink Reply by Mike Schwab on October 17, 2015 at 10:09am
Permalink Reply by Ben R. on October 17, 2015 at 10:52am

I like the idea of a horn that loud that you can refill with a bike pump. I have a bike light that is almost as bright as car head light that I put on my helmet in the winter when I bike more in the dark. One of the joys of it is that if I have a car driving like it sounds they were in this scenario I could just look over at them. I can imagine them looking up from their distracted driving thinking that some SUV, Train or Construction Equipment big enough to have a headlight 5' off the ground is suddenly about to Tee bone them from about 1 foot away. 

That horn, at that proximity might have a similar effect. I hope it sounds like a freight train.

Permalink Reply by Mike Schwab on October 19, 2015 at 6:47pm

Actually, it sounds like a semi air horn.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYkBHGurj-I 

Permalink Reply by Ben R. on October 20, 2015 at 2:42am

that's good too. I'm thinking Christmas list item.

Permalink Reply by Christopher Range on October 17, 2015 at 5:03pm

Why would an off-duty officer still have a set of handcuffs?  I doubt the Chicago Police Department allows their officers to keep a set of handcuffs on their person.  When they go off-duty.

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