The chain of events that led to the arrest of a 72-year-old Charlottesville man for creating a handmade crosswalk in the city began with his own announcement of what he had done.
The trigger was a Saturday morning email from Kevin Cox, the freelance crosswalk-maker, to Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders.
The city’s chief executive then contacted Police Chief Michael Kochis.
"After Sanders received this email, he asked for a risk assessment and notified Chief Kochis of the vandalism," according to the investigating detective.
"I was notified by several folks," Kochis told The Daily Progress. "It wasn’t hard to find. Mr. Cox was not trying to hide what he was doing."
Indeed.
"There is a marked crosswalk at 2nd Street and Elliott Avenue in spite of you," Cox told Sanders in his Saturday morning email. "It’s chalk, not paint. Please replace it with a real one."
As The Daily Progress first reported, Cox’s message about the materials used was either lost, ignored or not trusted by authorities.
The responding police officer investigating the markings, Sgt. Annmarie Newcomer, "was unable to determine if they were painted with permanent paint," wrote Charlottesville detective Natalia Aguilera.
Cox was arrested and charged on Wednesday for intentional vandalism causing damage. That was four days after he marked the crosswalk while, according to a video of the event, a group of onlookers cheered him on.
But not everyone was cheering.
"It was determined that illegal infrastructure was placed in City right of way," Charlottesville spokeswoman Afton Schneider told The Daily Progress in an email. "It was removed because it had potential to put the public at risk, to which we are responsible. No one has the right to put infrastructure in place except the City government."
Cox, however, contended that the city has failed its pedestrians, particularly in the vicinity of his makeshift crosswalk.
In October, one block away, 64-year-old Mamawa Simai, a Liberian immigrant and mother, was fatally struck in a crosswalk by a teenage driver who allegedly admitted to traveling above the 35 mph speed limit. In the wake of Simai’s death, a neighbor crafted a petition calling for better protections for pedestrians in the area, including another crosswalk at the location where Cox would eventually craft his own.
On the night of May 5, Cox said something in Charlottesville City Council’s chambers that in hindsight seems to have cryptically telegraphed his intention for Elliott Avenue.
"It’s a street in a neighborhood," Cox began. "It’s a street where people walk, ride bikes, where kids play on the sidewalk — where they draw on the sidewalk with chalk, and that’s an inspiration to me."
Cox insists that he did not damage the street, that he used a water-soluble spray chalk, the type used to mark lines on athletic fields, purchased from Amazon. Whatever he used, the city manager appears to have pushed a police investigation.
According to the detective’s report, after the responding officer was unable to ascertain the substance Cox used, she summoned personnel from the City Yard, home of the Charlottesville Public Works Department.
"They determined the markings could not be removed, so they left and returned with their equipment to paint over the markings," wrote Aguilera. "The cost for repair totaled $530.59."
Cox might consider himself fortunate that the bill did not climb higher, as a damage tally above $1,000 could have elevated his charge to a Class 6 felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. As it stands, Cox has been charged with the lesser version of intentional vandalism, a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by no more than 12 months in jail.
A University of Virginia historian whose recent books chronicle America’s reliance on cars, Peter Norton, said that with more than 7,000 American pedestrians getting hit and killed by motor vehicles each year, Cox should be lionized, not criminalized.
"This is in the great American tradition of civic activism that we saw in the Minutemen," Norton told The Daily Progress.
Norton said homemade crosswalks have their own history.
"They have a long and noble tradition," Norton said. "I have examples of them in newspapers going back to the 1950s."
Norton said that some of his students went out without his foreknowledge to place a chalked crosswalk on Stadium Road in the city late last year. They escaped without punishment, and Norton hopes the same for Cox.
"I celebrate this person," said Norton, "and I hope he gets his day in court."
For his defense, Cox has decided against representing himself — which he previously considered — and instead hired a lawyer known for fervent defenses in criminal cases.
"I have been retained," attorney Peter Frazier told The Daily Progress, "and I absolutely look forward to taking this to trial."
Source: www.dailyprogress.com