Policeman Tickets Charity Bike Riders in East Bay May 01, 2001 [From Ananova.com] A San Francisco policeman booked 15 cyclists taking part in a charity bike ride. He ticketed the riders for not stopping at crossroads. The 75-mile event was an annual one to raise funds for Multiple Sclerosis. Officer Walter Holtz was parked at a crossroads five miles from the finish line in San Ramon. The riders he caught will have to pay $150 each. He told the San Francisco Chronicle: "The people who broke the law just wanted me to wink and let it go. But it's a safety issue. I understand it was a charitable event, and it's important to raise money for MS. But everybody I stopped admitted to running the stop sign." Holtz said he was sorry he hadn't stopped more riders. "I couldn't see them all. There's only so much you can do," he said. Cathy Hunter, 48 and a headteacher, was one of the riders ticketed. She said: "The irony is, because I was so slow, throughout the whole race I was passed by hundreds of spandexed rear-ends. And I'm some snail who gets pulled over for a moving violation." The paper said all charity riders had signed a waiver agreeing to abide by traffic regulations. [I participated in the event described in this article, the NMSS Top Hat Classic. Technically, if the citations were issued five miles from the finish line of the course, the violations were made in Pleasanton, not San Ramon. The policeman in question would have to be a member of the Pleasanton Police Department, not the SFPD. --Ed.]
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