BRATTLEBORO — Are you willing to pay $150 to cross Main Street?
If not, then the Brattleboro Police Department has a less costly option.
Don't jaywalk.
The $150 maximum fine begins with a $75 citation, which, if the alleged jaywalker contacts traffic court in 20 days, “will likely be reduced to $10 or less,” says Brattleboro Police officer Adam Belville, who was issuing the citations.
Belville explained to the four people he cited for jaywalking between 10 and 11 a.m. last Tuesday that, if they ignored their tickets long enough, the nominal fine could climb as high as $150.
That news didn't sit well with alleged jaywalker Jessica Southard, an AmeriCorps worker and Brattleboro resident, whom Belville collared on her way into The Works eatery on Main Street.
“It sucks!” Southard said of the citation. As for the potential of a $150 fine, she called it “excessive.”
The reason for the option for the initial low fine, Belville said, is that “we're not trying to squeeze money out of people, we're really trying to educate them.”
In fact, said Belville, the Brattleboro Police has been unsuccessfully trying to educate the public on the dangers and traffic snarl-ups caused by Main Street jaywalkers for months now.
“This isn't a sudden thing,” Belville explained. “We've been out here warning people for a long time now, without citing anyone, but it's not working. People are still jaywalking.”
The surprised look on three of the four jaywalkers' faces - particularly the alleged jaywalker whom Belville followed into The Works and cited as she was buying a bagel and coffee - suggested that they had felt sucker-punched rather than educated.
“I've never been warned,” Southard said as she was clutching the pink and yellow citation duplicates. She added that she had not seen any officers warning others.
The citations, issued under Article III, section 16-33 of the Vermont Code, are part of a randomized and open-ended program of jaywalking scofflaw enforcement in Brattleboro, Belville said.
Belville acknowledges that the jaywalking citations are annoying, but he characterizes them as a necessary evil. “I hate giving out citations,” he said. “ And I don't cite people if they step out and then step back when they see me.”
“But I've personally attended two accidents in the past year in which cars have hit jaywalkers,” he said, emphasizing the public safety benefits of forcing people to cross Main Street and other streets only on designated crosswalks.
And it's not only safety: He said that when jaywalkers cross between the High Street and Elliot Street lights, they stop the traffic in both directions right back to the lights.
“Downtown traffic is bad enough without it being snarled up when the lights are green,” Belville said.
One alleged jaywalker - an out-of-town senior, who told Belville that he had been coming to Brattleboro for 50 years without ever once being stopped or even warned for jaywalking - appeared to understand the need for the enforcement.
But, he added as Belville wrote him a ticket outside the Vermont Artisans store, “Only if it's not selective enforcement.”
His comment was referencing Belville's stop of local novelist and confessed jaywalker Archer Mayor, which the visitor witnessed.
“Archer jaywalked, so he's going to have to get a ticket,” Belville assured the visiting alleged jaywalker.
“But there's no rush,” Belville later explained. “I know how to get hold of Archer. It's the people I don't know that I have to issue citations to straight away.”
Belville in very short order contacted Mayor, who confirmed just an hour later that he was cited.
Mayor, a law enforcement officer himself, said he was in town on official law-enforcement business. But he accepted the citation without complaint.
“What I did was inappropriate, stimulated in part by recognizing a colleague across the street and wishing to chat,” Mayor said. “My fault, entirely.”
Mayor gave no indication if a jaywalking citation would appear in the next installment of his popular Brattleboro-based Joe Gunther series of thrillers.