Not Unreasonable

I love the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution as much or more than the average person (as shown by my many past posts about it), but the recent Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on tire chalking is ridiculous.

Cops have been chalking tires since cars have been parked in the public right-of-way in time-limited areas. Yes, in this age of cameras there are other ways cops can manage this, but all of them are more intrusive and surveillance-oriented than chalk.

No, putting chalk on a tire is not a search or a seizure, let alone an unreasonable one. The car, though private property, has been left not only in a public place but on public property. I and the police can touch that car to our heart's content as long as we do not damage it. Chalk does not damage it. If it were in the owner's back yard, it would be different, but it's not.

The logic that appears to underlie this appellate decision (that the two-hour limit was not a matter of public safety but only a way of raising revenue) is pretty clueless. Those are not the only two choices from a public policy perspective: time-limiting parking means more people get to use the parking and have access to nearby stores, which is good for those businesses. That's the point of meters: to fairly share a limited resource (parking spaces that are nearby). Sounds like a compelling state or city interest to me.

Each car takes up 160 square feet. If every car got 160 square feet to use as long as its driver wanted, there would soon be no buildings left for the drivers to visit once they left their cars. The members of this court need a lesson from Donald Shoup on the high cost of free parking.