This morning, SC was reading through the April 2004 issue of Car and Driver -- who knew that the post office had perfected time travel? -- and came across an article called "The End of Cruising". In the context of interest to C&D readers, this refers to the behavior of aimlessly driving back and forth down a long road which is considered to be a location of social interest.
Much of the article is concerned with the legal battles taking place across the country over what behavior crosses the line between harmless fun and potentially criminal activity. While the article notes that cruising used to be a fairly harmless pastime of the '60s and '70s, exemplified by "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" and American Graffiti, it has now become associated with gang violence, drug dealing, and excessive traffic. As a former regular victim of Los Angeles traffic, SC can't help but wonder if most people irked by cruising aren't really just annoyed about the traffic.
The definition of "cruising" as a criminal offense is subject to intense scrutiny. C&D's article opens in 1990, with the tale of an 18-year-old Dairy Queen manager pulled over for having crossed the same point on a street three times in the course of two hours. In the Wisconsin town where the story took place, cruising was defined as "unnecessary, repetitive driving", and could be enforced after precisely the scenario above was met. Because the driver was 18, the officer refused to accept his story about transporting DQ-labeled merchandise between stores (it didn't help that he had unloaded on the trip right before he was stopped).
According to C&D, cases like this have resulted in anti-cruising laws being rewritten to more precisely specify that a motorist could avoid arrest by presenting a legitimate reason for the trips. However, even this modification presents complications.
In favor of the laws, C&D cites considerable anecdotal evidence that cruising is in fact connected to criminal behavior. Against the laws, though, is roughly equal evidence that they are enacted with the intent of enabling police to harrass teenagers, and to enable additional charges to be brought in loitering cases.
The article concludes with a discussion of Los Angeles' Sunset Strip, formerly a favorite hangout of SC (who never went there except on foot -- the warnings against cruising were unmistakable, and searching for parking could easily lead to violating the law, another point against it). It doesn't really add anything to the question of what an appropriate criminal definition of cruising might be, but the facts adduced are sobering. With a definition of 3 times past the same point in 2 hours, LA measured 10,000 offenses in one recent four-month period, assigning between 45 and 65 officers on any one night to this project alone. Clearly, given this definition, the number of offenses measured is limited only by the number of officers available.
SC doesn't have any particular insights to offer about how cruising should be defined. It's open to debate on the grounds of empirical evidence (does it reduce crime or not), legal theory (do cruising laws constitute unreasonable restraints on citizens' freedom), and mere practical considerations (can it be enforced cost-effectively). All of these questions will end up having largely political answers, making it very difficult to say what, exactly, it means to "cruise".
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