Tampa poised to repeal law that requires bells on bicycles

TAMPA — Bicycle riders beware: It's illegal to pedal around Tampa without a bell on your bike.

That's about to change, though.

After a legal challenge, the City Council is likely to repeal the obscure ordinance on Thursday.

"It's up to the council, but the court's preference seems to be that we not have a criminal penalty for this type of activity," said city attorney Chip Fletcher.

Passed in 1989, the law makes it a second-degree misdemeanor to ride a bike without a bell or some other signaling device that can be heard from at least 100 feet away.

Some have argued that the law and others like it are a way to give law enforcement officers the opportunity to stop people if they suspect other laws are being broken.

"It's just a free pass to put their fingers in other people's pockets that they shouldn't be putting them in," said Steve Mason, a former public defender who successfully took his argument against an identical ordinance in Orlando to the Florida Supreme Court in 1990.

Mason said Orlando law enforcement officers didn't give a "rat's rear end" about whether bikes had bells on them.

"The one thing they cared about was whether it gave them the pretext to pull someone over lawfully," Mason said. "It's a sneak end run around the Fourth Amendment. I found it offensive back then, and I find it equally offensive today. I thought it was all over."

In 2008, Tampa police arrested nine people for operating a bike without a bell, said department spokeswoman Laura McElroy.

"It was a rarely enforced ordinance," she said. "So no longer using the ordinance will certainly not impact our service to the community."

No one has been arrested for the offense since an appeals court said the rule conflicted with state laws, she said.

The court's opinion came in a case involving Lamarvin Barry Brown, now 16, who was arrested for not having a bike bell on April 12, 2007.

A police officer stopped Brown in a West Tampa neighborhood because he was riding a bicycle at night without a rear light, according to court documents.

The officer noticed the bike didn't have a bell, and arrested Brown for violating the city code.

The arrest opened the door for the officer to search Brown and slap a possession charge on him after finding two bags of marijuana in his pocket.

The teen took the city to court. Public defenders argued the marijuana charge should be thrown out because the arrest was illegal. Under state law, they said, a person can't be arrested for a bicycle infraction because it's a civil offense, not a criminal one.

A trial court rejected the argument, but the Second District Court of Appeals overturned the ruling in a Jan. 30 opinion.

McElroy noted that before the bike bell stop, Brown had a long arrest record dating back to 2003 for offenses ranging from battery to burglary. He is in jail after being charged in July with burglary involving a firearm.

But the appeals court dinged Tampa for continuing to arrest people for not having bike bells 14 years after the Florida Supreme Court ruled that an identical law in Orlando violated state law.

In the Orlando case, public defenders successfully convinced judges that the ordinance was intended to give police a tool for targeting street-level drug activity and was applied selectively against young, black men.

St. Petersburg's bike ordinance doesn't call for anything that isn't already in state law, said Cheryl Stacks, the city's bicycle pedestrian coordinator. Bikers in St. Petersburg need to use a white headlight and red taillight at night, and the rider needs to give some kind of audible warning while on the road.

"The state calls for an audible warning when passing," Stacks said. "A rider's voice is good enough for that."

Similarly, New Port Richey's city code refers to state law for bicycle regulations.

Tampa council member Charlie Miranda said he's all in favor of getting the bike bell ordinance off the books.

"It's a silly law," he said. "You can't hear a horn at 100 feet in traffic. How are you going to hear a bell?"

Added council member John Dingfelder: "Every now and then I come across an ordinance that is really silly or outdated. I'm always glad to see us get rid of them."

Times staff writer Jamal Thalji and researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Janet Zink can be reached at jzink@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3401.