Outrage

I love to ride my bikes (I have several). Some things that make me happy (there are many more):

• Watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan
• The momentary connection with a teenager I see practicing track stands
• A quick wave to drivers who yield the right-of-way
• The money I save when I don’t take the train to work
• The countdown on the last few days before reaching 5,000 miles for the year
• Working on my bikes

For all that, there are some things I don’t like. Scary stuff happens pretty frequently. I don’t like not being able to share the entirety of my bike experience with my lovely wife, simply because some of the things I might want to share would scare the bejeebers out of her. Like the near misses. Or the stories of other cyclists who have been maimed or killed by cars.

This all came into focus recently when I read about the death of Tom Palermo, a framebuilder in Baltimore, MD. Several aspects of the tragedy seemed eerily similar to those related to the death of Bobby Cann here in Chicago:

• Both drivers had previous alcohol-related brushes with the law.
• Both cyclists were struck from behind.
• Both incidents occurred during the daytime on straight streets with plenty of visibility.

I went back and read the Chicago Reader article carefully (I don't recall seeing it before), and was struck by something. Ryne San Hamel, the driver accused of killing Bobby Cann, not only had two DUI arrests within a year as an underage (18-19yo) drinker ten years before, both cases had been plea bargained down to almost nothing, in exchange for seemingly hefty fines. From the article:

It seems one key to getting off easy is being arrested in the suburbs. "A lot of times, the village attorneys are just out to make money for the village," [Cathy] Stanley [court watch director for the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists] claims. In plea deals, village attorneys can reduce charges or overturn license suspensions in exchange for adding hefty fines, Stanley says. Prosecutors in the state's attorney's office, by contrast, "work much harder getting convictions."

…

The village attorney dropped the misdemeanor DUI charge, and San Hamel paid a $1,886 fine for making an improper turn. As part of the plea bargain, he also attended DUI school and completed one year of court supervision. The improper-turn citation was dropped too.

So we have what appears to be a significant conflict of interest on the part of the village attorney where this case was adjudicated, and probably for other city, town, county, and village attorneys all across the state. In exchange for a hefty fine (which almost certainly went into the village coffers, not into some sort of DUI fund), San Hamel never served a day in jail, and it appears he never lost his license. Furthermore, those two arrests were expunged from his record, so that in 2013, the police investigating the death of Bobby Cann initially only saw a ticket San Hamel had received for running a red light in 2010. They had no idea he was a multiple repeat offender.

It seems to me that local prosecutors should not have as much discretion as they do. They thwart the laws passed by the legislature in exchange for a few shekels added to their cities’ coffers. Wouldn't it be better to set up a system where local prosecutors are incentivized to pursue convictions instead of plea bargains? Perhaps the state should reward local jurisdictions monetarily for DUI convictions to remove the incentive to abrogate state law.