Jaywalk, and you might get a ticket

Stepped-up enforcement by police aims to curb pedestrian fatalities

Pedestrians, beware. You, too, are on law enforcement’s radar.

They are watching you frombehind trees and in marked police cars. And if you happen to jaywalk, they’re going to slap you with a $63 fine.

Police throughout South Florida are turning up the heat to save pedestrians from fatal encounters with cars. And also to protect drivers from being forced to brake for someone unexpectedly crossing the middle of a street.

The state is paying local officers to work overtime to ticket pedestrians who walk where they shouldn’t. This year, $1.5 million was distributed to 41 agencies, with the size of the grants based on how each agency proposed to handle the problem.

Apparently, it’s easy pickings in an area with one of the highest rates of pedestrian deaths in the country.

“You’d be surprised at the number of people who break the law with an officer

sitting right there in a marked car,” said Joy Oglesby, a spokeswoman for the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

Broward County last year ticketed 1,575 scofflaws while Palm Beach County nabbed 966 and Miami-Dade, 400.

The point of the campaign, Oglesby said, is to get “motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists to comply with roadway safety guidelines.”

For pedestrians, that means you must walk on a sidewalk when one is provided, cross intersections only in crosswalks and obey all applicable traffic signals.

The first phase of the anti-jaywalking campaign involved handing out information about those laws, but now enforcement is underway. It’s concentrated on streets where cars have killed pedestrians. In Lauderhill, for example, the focus is on Sunrise Boulevard near the Swap Shop, Oakland Park Boulevard, and Northwest 31st Avenue.

Fort Lauderdale, which received a $13,719 grant, has been enforcing the rules on Federal Highway and State Road A1A and on Sunrise and Broward Boulevards between Federal Highway and Interstate 95.

In Palm Beach County, pedestrian patrols include U.S. 441 and Sandalfoot Boulevard, as well as various intersections on MilitaryTrail, SouthernBoulevard and Dixie Highway.

ageggis@tribpub.com, 561-243-6624 or @AnneBoca

Joan and Scott Possiel, winter residents of Deerfield Beach, were walking and rolling his scooter through the torn-up intersection at Hillsboro Boulevard and State Road A1A when they came face-to-face with something unexpected: Jaywalking enforcement....