Herhold: Ticketing San Jose's mayor could backfire on cops

There's no other way to say this except to put it bluntly. Giving a ticket to San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed for not signaling in a right-hand turn lane -- and then posting a photo of the ticket online -- constitutes a public relations fiasco for the San Jose police.

You can understand why the cops are furious with Reed: Last June's Measure B took direct aim at their pensions. Now they're facing more erosion in their health benefits. If I were a cop, I'd feel betrayed.

That doesn't change the hard truth. Almost everything about this episode, from the questionable ticket to the decision to photograph it to seeing that it was posted on Twitter, smacks of petty vindictiveness. And that can only increase public distrust of the cops.

Let's begin with the ticket itself. Reed was ticketed at 7:35 a.m. on Tuesday at White and Mabury roads as he was on his way to work. The mayor was in a marked right-hand turn lane, or pocket, on southbound White. He could only turn right onto Mabury Road.

The cops I trust say that the officer who wrote the ticket, Kevin Kyono, did not target the mayor, and did not know initially whom he had stopped. I'm willing to believe this. From all accounts, the stop was handled professionally.

Trivial infraction

But the ticket is a trivial infraction, if it is an infraction at all. My authority, Mr. Roadshow, Gary Richards, checked with his traffic sources,

who told him that a driver in a designated turn lane does not have to continuously use a turn signal unless it affects oncoming traffic or the cars behind.

To get a sense of comparison, I spent a half-hour Thursday at Pedro and Taylor streets, where cops leaving headquarters turn right onto Taylor to get to Highway 87.

In the marked right-hand turn lanes, less than a quarter of all drivers used their blinkers. None of the five marked police units I saw did so. Put another way, the cops are ticketing Reed for something they ignore themselves.

The questions about the ticket were dwarfed by the shenanigans that followed. Someone took a photo of the ticket -- not Kyono, I'm told -- and made sure it appeared on a police-friendly Twitter feed, where it was quickly snapped up by the media.

This is doubly stupid. In the first place, most people don't like the notion that their traffic violations will be broadcast. It's painful enough to pay the fine and deal with the insurance headaches.

Vindictiveness

In the second, it looks incredibly vindictive. People want to believe that cops treat everyone the same. Here is living, breathing proof that they do not -- at a time when serious crime is on the rise.

"It was a stupid thing to do,'' said Police Officers Association president Jim Unland. "I understand on a basic human emotions level how this happened. But it's a mistake.''

Police Chief Chris Moore has said he will investigate who took the photo and how it was leaked online. And I wish him well. Someone clearly needs discipline.

In a larger sense, however, the political damage has already been done. Whoever engineered this caper is probably moonlighting as Mitt Romney's foreign policy adviser. The residue has the same ugly quality.

Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@mercurynews.com.

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/scott-herhold/ci_21537851/herhold-ticketing-san-joses-mayor-could-backfire-cops?source=rss_viewed

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