SEATTLE — Homeless people receive a disproportionately large percentage of jaywalking fines in the state — at least 41%, according to a report published earlier this year — despite being only about 0.4% of the population, according to the federally required Point-in-Time count.
The report, commissioned by Transportation Choices Coalition, suggests police use jaywalking laws as a way to stop and check people for warrants, a tactic they say perpetuates biased policing. That’s disputed by police officials.
In this legislative session, state lawmakers considered a bill to decriminalize jaywalking, putting Washington alongside several other states and cities that have done so.
The bill failed to progress this year after butting up against concerns about traffic safety, with the state experiencing record-high pedestrian fatalities.
But advocates of decriminalizing jaywalking are skeptical that jaywalking laws keep people safer.
How jaywalking laws are used
Jaywalking laws were first added in Washington state in the early 20th century in response to a rise in pedestrians being killed by vehicles. But it does not appear they are primarily used for traffic safety today.
Before the pandemic, police in Washington issued 800 to 900 jaywalking citations per year. More often, they stopped people for jaywalking but just provided a warning. Regardless of a ticket or not, in 77% of stops, police checked whether people had existing warrants for other crimes.
In 1997, the state Supreme Court ruled that police could not do this. Then, after lobbying by police, the state Legislature quickly passed a law that allows officers to check for warrants during traffic stops like jaywalking.
“[A warrant check] is a very important tool for officer safety,” said Larry Erickson, head of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, speaking in 1997 in support of that legislation. “Without it, we could be turning loose people who have already preyed on the public and here we have them in custody.”
Police still use jaywalking as a way to stop people they are suspicious of today.
In 2017, a Kirkland police officer wrote in a report that he saw four people sitting at a bus stop past the time buses run in an area known for drug activity and vehicle prowls, where he had just recently made a drug arrest. Suspicious, he decided to approach them. As he started walking over, one of the people sitting at the bus stop left, jaywalking across a street, which allowed the officer to stop him.
It was a 16-year-old Indigenous homeless boy living on his own who was carrying heroin and had a warrant for his arrest. Police took him to the county’s juvenile detention center.
Where people are stopped for jaywalking
Ethan Campbell, author of the jaywalking report, said the discretion given to police officers to enforce jaywalking can perpetuate bias “that tends to associate Black individuals with crime and that tends to associate homeless individuals with disorder.”
The jaywalking report found that people of color are also disproportionately stopped for jaywalking. Black people receive a fifth of jaywalking tickets given in the state, despite making up 4% of the population.
Sara Rankin, a homelessness law expert at Seattle University, said that when homeless people are issued fines, it increases the likelihood of them staying homeless. Ignoring fines can turn into a misdemeanor over time, making it more difficult to get a job, or it can make someone ineligible for shelter, housing or other benefits.
“Giving people fines and fees that they can’t pay is sort of pointless,” Rankin said. “You have to ask yourself if the laws are serving a benefit other than as a tool of discrimination that’s designed to disappear undesirable folks.”
Within King County, the report found people were more likely to be cited for jaywalking in Tacoma and South King County. Seattle has steadily decreased its enforcement of jaywalking over the past few decades, though it was also named in the report for high numbers.
The rising rents in Seattle and across the region have increased the population of low-income and homeless people in South King County and Tacoma. And suburban areas have wide arterial roads that were not designed for the pedestrian activity that exists today.
In Renton and Federal Way, more than 30% of jaywalking stops between 2017 and 2022 were conducted within a few blocks of shelters or other areas of concentrated homelessness, which the report said suggested police are “targeting” homeless people.
Federal Way declined to respond to the report’s claims aside from stating its police had issued 113 jaywalking citations over the last 10 years. Renton police Chief Jon Schuldt denied the report’s accusation.
“In Renton, we do not target anyone based on individual characteristics. Our officers’ actions in these cases were to prevent a tragedy, follow up on a crime, or conduct a welfare check,” Schuldt wrote in an email.
He said he reviewed 24 jaywalking fines his officers issued in 2020, the year with the most citations, and that most involved other crimes like suspected theft or were in extremely busy multilane roads with high danger to both pedestrians and drivers.
Decriminalizing jaywalking fails
Other places have decriminalized jaywalking, including California, Virginia, Nevada, Kansas City, Denver and Anchorage. Washington has considered a bill in the last two legislative sessions to join them.
Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, D-Seattle, who sponsored the bill, said the state and cities should work to add sidewalks and pedestrian infrastructure to address safety issues, but those projects will take time.
“This is a common sense way to kind of just make sure that people aren’t being punished for things that aren’t in their control,” Saldaña said.
The bill went through several iterations, landing on a version that would have limited jaywalking stops on streets that are 35 mph or less. Police officers would have only been able to stop someone if they moved in front of a car so suddenly it would be impossible for the driver to stop. Jaywalking laws wouldn’t have changed on higher speed roads.
Groups testified with concerns, like the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, which said the bill might increase the number of pedestrian deaths.
Pedestrian deaths hit record numbers in 2021, about a 33% increase from the previous years. State data shows that 61% of pedestrians killed were outside of intersections or crosswalks.
The commission suggested an alternative approach with more objective language that would allow jaywalking only if no car was within 250 or 500 feet of the pedestrian depending on what the street’s speed limit is.
“I don’t know for sure if it would make it worse, but it certainly wasn’t going to improve that situation,” said Mark McKechnie, director of external relations at the commission.
However, early data from Virginia, one of the first places to decriminalize jaywalking, shows no increase in pedestrian deaths and injuries, according to a report by America Walks, a national pedestrian rights advocacy group.
At least some of the recently increased pedestrian deaths in Washington are driven by homelessness.
Preliminary data from Seattle’s Department of Transportation shows that in the past few years, about a quarter of the people who died in vehicle crashes in Seattle were homeless, up from 13% in years prior.
McKechnie said the Washington Traffic Safety Commission has reviewed incidents from around the state that show a significant portion of pedestrian deaths involve homeless people. Saldaña said it could be because homeless people are being pushed to camp closer to rights of way.
“We share concerns about the existing large number of pedestrian fatalities from car crashes,” said Hester Serebrin, policy director at Transportation Choices Coalition. “Jaywalking laws are not keeping those people safe now. They are just criminalizing behavior that everyone engages in.”
The bill never made it out of the Senate Rules Committee. That means that Democratic majority leaders thought it didn’t have enough votes to pass or there were other bills of higher importance. Saldaña is working to get the bill passed in the next session, which is longer, when she said there will be more time to educate people on it.
