Cheney Ordinance Lets Cops Ticket ‘Nuisance Smokers’

From the SOUTH SIDE VOICE, February 5, 1998, page S3: CORRECTION Cheney High School Assistant Principal Ray Hare estimates that between 50 and 60 students at the high school smoke. A story in last week’s South Side Voice stated an incorrect figure.

Cheney’s youngest smokers may now be punished for their habit.

According to a city ordinance that went into effect at the beginning of the year, Cheney police can now ticket the city’s “nuisance smokers” - namely, underaged students.

Sixteen- and 17-year-olds caught smoking could be slapped with a $95 citation. Younger smokers could be referred to juvenile court.

The law is intended to break up the cluster of students smoking outside the high school along Sixth Avenue, often spilling out onto the street.

But last Friday, a lump of about 30 students braved the icy weather - and the threat of a ticket - to get their nicotine fix. They stood under a blue haze on the sidewalk directly across from the school.

With the policy just two weeks old, students had already hatched a plan: If a cop rolls by, pass your cigarette to an 18-year-old.

“It’s just messed up,” said Thomas Johnson, a freshman. “People are still going to smoke. Adults just don’t like seeing kids standing around.”

“It’s really stupid,” said a 15-year-old girl. “It’s our choice whether or not we smoke.”

But city officials say the law is less about smoking than about the traffic hazard the students present.

“It’s a busy thoroughfare,” said Cheney Police Chief Jerry Gardner. “You have this mix of traffic going through, and then you throw 100 kids out on the sidewalk. That creates a conflict.”

Sixth Avenue houses Cheney’s high school and middle school, and provides a link to two nearby elementary schools.

The traffic problem is a fairly recent occurrence. For years, students were permitted to duck under bleachers behind the school to smoke. The school even provided ashtrays.

“It was okay because they were readily supervised and out of view,” said assistant principal Ray Hare.

But when a new state law went into effect last July banning smoking from all school campuses, educators moved the smokers onto the sidewalk in front of the school, technically off school grounds.

“It became a spectacle for the community, having 40 to 50 students in front of the school,” said Hare.

Students overflowed into the streets, slowing traffic.

Police tried to stop the problem simply by asking students to stay out of the street. That didn’t happen.

“They wanted to defy us a little bit,” Gardner said.

So Gardner approached the city council, asking them to give police the power to ticket so-called “nuisance smokers.”

“My hope is we never have to write that ticket,” Gardner said. “That would be a delight.”

In these first few weeks, officers have increased patrolling around the school during breaks and lunches. So far, they’ve handed out only one warning and no tickets.

Still, the students remain, huddled across the street from school property.

“In this community, we’re not going to allow possession of tobacco among underaged kids,” said Gardner. “I’m hoping they’ll just get that message.”

Hare says he knows smoking will continue at the high school, where he estimates 50 to 60 percent of the student body lights up.

“It’s been kind of a cat and mouse game,” he said. “I’m not naive enough to think no one out there is smoking. But students are pretty much recognizing if they’re going to smoke, they have to do it in a car or off school grounds.”

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