In a recent news story a black female professor from a university in the Southwest was roughed up and arrested on campus for jaywalking without her I.D.

This makes for a fitting point of departure for two subjects.

In case you are not aware, most municipalities have laws against vagrancy. This is billed as a service to the homeowners in the locale who do not wish to see their property values plummet due to an influx of homeless people. Vagrancy laws are usually only enforced against homeless men and collections of homeless teenagers.

However, in areas with high drug use—anywhere in Maryland for instance, which has the highest per capita heroin addict population in the nation—enforcement of this misdemeanor charge is used as a tool to ‘sweep’ areas of potential drug buyers. As a supermarket manager I noted that the cops only locked up shoplifters if they hurt someone, back-talked the cops, or had no I.D. When you are on the street those are the three things most likely to get you locked up.

Since the two most common methods for determining vagrancy are lack of money, and lack of I.D., and since asking you to go into your pockets necessitates a search of your pockets to make sure you have no weapons, drug and weapon possession charges are often generated in this way.

Wherever you live it is probably against the law to be out of your home without a dollar, or without up-to-date identification. This helps keep the state in business. It’s not really about that $50 charge for your state I.D. though. What it is really about is making sure you carry your proof of geographic meta-tribal affiliation. It has always surprised me that I have never met any other human that resents having to carry I.D. on penalty of incarceration. 160 years ago, to suggest to any white American that they had to carry indentifying papers would have brought howls of disapproval from the highest and lowest places in the land. It would be regarded as an outrage that whites would be required to prove their right to walk down the road like a slave carrying a pass from his master.

I am 51 and I have yet to meet a man who resents this most obvious badge of state ownership, which would have seemed like a clear admission of slavery to our ancestors.

Not a grumble.

Not a WTF.

Just a bended knee. George R.R. Martin’s psychopathic Game of Thrones medieval fantasy monarchs would be pleased.

Jaywalking is the crossing of a roadway on foot by any means other than walking between the lines at a designated intersection while the safe crossing signal is in force. If strictly enforced this could put 20% of many urban areas behind bars in a single day, if the manpower was available to process them. There are three reasons why people—predominantly from urban areas—jaywalk.

1. Unlike in suburban areas with speeding motorists on the streets and spacious sidewalks with clear fields of view, city sidewalks are congested, offer a poor field of view, and are the favorite haunts of strong arm muggers. According to my own survey of the last 62 muggings that I have documented in the Baltimore area, only one of them occurred on a road surface. 61 to 1 odds of being mugged on the sidewalk to being mugged on the street, has urbanites like myself always opting to walk in the street when traffic permits. Many law enforcement surveys indicate that jaywalking is dangerous, with many injuries and fatalities from automobiles, mostly incurred by women and the elderly. However, muggings are underreported [about 25% in Baltimore get reported] and then sanitized or suppressed as the stats are ‘juked’ by the administration.

2. Frankford Avenue and Belair Road is a typical Baltimore City intersection. Belair is a 4-lane route plus two shoulders, with a general actual speed of 40 MPH. The east-west Belair crossing is about 50 yards, Frankford about 35 yards. The crosswalk gives the pedestrian a maximum of 8 seconds to cross. Keep in mind that turns are allowed on red, which means people in crosswalks are blindsided routinely. These injuries are either termed jaywalking because the 7-8 seconds had expired, or are not recorded. High school athletes run 40 yards in about 4.5 seconds. Two weeks ago I watched an elderly lady with a cane take the cross walk, which ran out on her halfway across, because she had to wait for the turning traffic. She had been nearly mowed down by a left turning motorist before she hit the center line. The north and south bound traffic [under no civil or legal obligation, and fully within their rights to mow her down like a Death Race 2000 scene.], humanly waited for her, but the left-lane turning south-bound drivers, honked, and cursed at her, with one SUV driver speeding at her and then breaking to try and herd her faster across the walk. She staggered and almost fell as she anticipated the vehicle hitting her. She eventually made it to the curb with the 25-year-old woman driving the SUV screaming obscenities at her, and the 30-year-old man in the sports car behind the SUV cussing at the elderly pedestrian as well. I jogged across the street 30 yards to the south while this was going on, not having to worry about getting clipped at the corner from behind, but being able to see those cars without turning my head. The deployment of teams of City crossing guards to aid children and teens in negotiating these giant bowling-for-pedestrian alleys is a tacit admission by the municipality that crossing times allotted by the traffic light system are inadequate for unburdened youth. How is grandma supposed to get across the street with her groceries?

3. A paucity of vehicles in the lower income city helps cultivate jaywalking as a habit. In many areas of Baltimore side-streets get so little traffic that they are safe walkways and even playgrounds, as very few residents have vehicles.

I realize that some might think this piece is just a justification of my gonzo jaywalking practices. But those are the facts.

I understand that facts do not have any bearing on post-modern discussions, so just call me an old school nerd waxing self-servingly nostalgic.