Over at the Examiner, Scott McCabe points us to the rage of L’Enfant Cafe co-owner Christopher Lynch, who was reportedly arrested and jailed for several hours last week after being caught riding an unregistered scooter. After hearing similar stories from a friend and a pizza delivery driver who works nearby, McCabe posted a rant on the door to his restaurant, decrying the mixed up priorities of the MPD, who in his view are aggressively targeting scooter riders while more serious violent crimes in the Adams Morgan neigborhood remain unsolved.

The article notes a couple of interesting facts about scooters: they are relatively environmentally friendly, getting far better gas mileage than automobiles, and the police believe drug dealers use them to … peddle their wares, so to speak. We will admit to not being aware of the latter trend — it seems somewhat preposterous to suggest that people driving adorable Vespas are automatically more suspicious than any other person, but if any drug dealers are reading our site and wish to verify that scooters are in fact the mode of transportation of choice for their set, we’ll happily accept the argument.

But the real story here is, of course, that Lynch was caught not in compliance with the law, and he’s bummed out about it. As anyone who has ever gone through the interminable vehicle registration process in the District knows, it’s just one of those things you have to go through to earn your stripes as a D.C. resident. If you buy a scooter, you have to register it, just like any other vehicle. Should these folks really be given special consideration because they are more environmentally conscious, or because they may be being more aggressively targeted because they’re suspected of being drug dealers? Of course not.

Now, the question of whether unregistered vehicles merit arrests or deserve merely tickets is another matter. Being thrown in the slammer for a few hours does seem an excessive punishment for this kind of offense — Lynch’s sign also accuses the MPD of making these kinds of arrests in an effort to boost their stats during Chief Lanier’s “All Hands on Deck” initiatives this summer. Still, allow us to point out the instructions for first-time vehicle registration in D.C., readily available on the internet. Do you think Lynch’s anger is justified?

Photo by katmere