Do you believe your constitutional rights are being trampled on because you can't cruise up and down State Street as many times as you'd like?
Do you think Salt Lake City has embraced a totalitarian philosophy with its recent adoption of an anti-cruising ordinance?Salt Lake's cruising ban has met with opposition from a group of local residents who Monday filed a 3rd District Court lawsuit challenging the ban's legality. The suit, naming Mayor Deedee Corradini and Police Chief Ruben Ortega as defendants, says enforcement of the cruising ban is illegal because the city did not obtain permission from the Utah Department of Transportation before enacting the ban.
But if you think Utah's capital is the only place in the nation that has dreamed up such a plan to interfere with your fun, think again.
In Los Angeles, entire streets are shut down to combat problems associated with cruisers.
"We are having major problems with cruising," LAPD spokesman Guillermo Campos said. "We may get up to a half dozen to a dozen shootings in one cruising night."
The public outcry over unsafe streets led Los Angeles officers to institute a harsh crackdown by shutting down well-known cruising strips.
"Absolutely we shut off streets and divert traffic elsewhere," Campos said. "Cruising may have been around since the 1950s, but it is only recently we have had to put restrictions on it because people have started shooting each other."
Campos said a major problem is gang confrontations. Just last month, one person was killed and eight others were injured in separate shootings during a single weekend, Campos said.
"They drive up to someone else, ask where the other is from and before that person can even respond, because they don't really care, they just start shooting. They're spraying people, hitting little kids."
It hasn't come to that in Salt Lake City, although one recent homicide occurred just off State Street after two carloads of cruisers met up with each other.
Before you skeptically claim the troubles in Los Angeles in noway compare to Salt Lake City, consider a little town in the deep South.
Steeped in confederate history, Lincolnton, N.C., is a textile town in the heart of Lincoln County.
With a population of just 10,300, it, too, instituted a cruising ban -- four years ago.
Because Lincolnton is the only incorporated municipality in Lincoln County, it is a popular destination for teenagers in a three-state area. "We're centrally located in the county, so if you're going to town to cruise, you're going to Lincolnton," Police Chief T.J. Burgin said.
"If someone from the east side of the state wanted to see someone from the the west side, they'd go cruising. Over the years, there's been a lot of good marriages evolve out of cruising on our Main Street."
That street became so popular among the cruisers, Burgin said people would make a two-hour drive from Tennessee, drive in from Virginia or hop on over from North Carolina to go to Lincolnton.
Main Street has been the hot cruising spot in Lincolnton since the 1950s, Burgin said.
"However, there was very little crime and very little traffic congestion. Well, our population grew. Our city grew. But our streets didn't and Main Street stayed Main Street. So what we had in the '50s was cruising of three to four blocks that turned into cruising of 26 blocks in the '90s."
Burgin said traffic was bumper to bumper.
"Traffic was so bad it got to where traveling those 26 blocks may take an hour."
Like Salt Lake City, accompanying the traffic congestion was an assorted variety of crimes, Burgin said.
"We had drunken and disruptive behavior, street fights, drug violations, shootings. We had only one or two shootings over four to five years, but there were a lot of guns being displayed."
Burgin's first response was to throw more officers at the problem, but that helped little.
Next, he said, the city banned parking on Main Street after 9 p.m.
"That cut down on some of the problems, but what that did is put more cruisers on the street. And that wasn't good."
Police then tried to deter cruisers by writing citations for any violation they could find. Burgin hired six off-duty officers to target violators.
"We'd get anywhere from 75 to 125 citations on weekends," Burgin said, "but that wasn't good either."
High school kids would have to come to court and miss a day of school.
"Everyone cruising fell under the scrutiny of those officers. Good kids who happened to have a bad tire, who may have been drinking one beer. They all fell under the magnifying glass and everybody got caught."
Burgin said the police department tried that for a year because everyone was reluctant to impose a cruising ban.
"It was the last thing we wanted to do," he said. "It was the last thing the council wanted to do. Many of them had grown up as cruisers. There are a lot of good people who cruise; 85 percent of them are out there just to have a good time. But there was an unending list of problems caused by cruising."
Fed up with cruising headaches, Burgin said he marched into the City Council chambers, slapped some tear gas and semi-automatic rifles onto a desk and told political leaders these were the type of weapons being taken from cruisers.
The city imposed the ban.
Four years later, Burgin said, calls to the area have dropped by 80 percent, allowing his officers to handle other duties. His officers have had to issue only one cruising citation.
"And that was two years into the program. We don't want to write these kids a ticket, we just wanted them to stop."
Burgin said everyone was surprised at the ban's effect.
"We thought it would reduce it somewhat, but it killed it."
Burgin said everyone suspected the cruisers would go elsewhere, but he has no idea where they've gone.
Although the decision may have been unpopular, it was not met by huge protests, Burgin said.
"Once I explained it to area teenagers at high schools, showed them the stats, the weapons and the problems, they understood. They didn't realize."
Since Salt Lake's ban went into effect earlier this month, police here have also been surprised at the result.
"It's actually working better than we imagined," Salt Lake Police Sgt. Mark Peck said.
"Traffic has gone away. It has had an incredible effect."
On one recent Saturday night, Peck said officers logged 987 vehicles passing a cruising checkpoint. Only 12 passed by twice. One car made the illegal third pass, and its driver was cited.
Peck said about eight citations have been issued since the ban took effect.
"This isn't about restricting fun. We want people to go out and have fun. But we didn't see that that was happening on State Street. What we had was the fights, the robberies, the assaults. I don't think anyone thinks that is fun."
Since the ban, calls on State have dropped to three or four on weekend nights, compared with about 17 this time last year, Peck said.
"It's working, and that is wonderful. Nobody wants the ticket. We thought they would park their cars and hang out, and we're not seeing that. We thought they might go to South Salt Lake, but we sent officers into those neighborhoods and they're not there. They're coming downtown, seeing we're set up and they're going away."