Ideally, laws are the glue that hold a civilized society together, providing clear standards of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. But when laws are selectively enforced, they become instruments of harassment and preferential treatment.
There's no better example of selective enforcement than our law against drinking alcohol in public. With the exception of certain special events approved by the city commission, drinking alcohol on the street and in other public places is not allowed, period. But here in Key West you'd be hard pressed to find a bar that didn't supply "to go" cups. As a result, Duval Street and the neighborhoods surrounding it are regularly transformed into a huge open-air drinking establishment by tourists who are happily oblivious to the public drinking ban. The litter of plastic cups bearing bar logos supply ample evidence of this practice.
But not everybody gets a free pass on public drinking. Enforcement of the open container law is one of the primary tools used to harass homeless people in Key West. It is also applied to locals drinking outside the "entertainment zone" as one city commissioner so colorfully describes the Duval Street area. The difference, of course, is that people hassled for drinking in public are not paying customers.
Another example of selective enforcement involves the commercial use of city property. If you or I decided to set up shop on a city sidewalk or street, code enforcement officials would shut us down instantly. But some well-connected local business people don't have that problem.
One local business occupies a long stretch of street marked off-limits by a yellow curb every business day, paying no compensation to the city for the privilege. City officials claim that they are just giving the business owner temporary use of the street while he renovates his building— a project that has been going on for years now.
And this is just one of many examples of businesses profiting from the use of city property, a practice that not only ties up public space with no compensation to taxpayers, but also gives an unfair competitive advantage to some business owners.
Perhaps the example of selective enforcement that most people are familiar with is the controversy surrounding arrests for bared breasts during Fantasy Fest. Many business owners publicly criticized the police for arresting tourists, and one city commissioner called for a temporary suspension of public nudity laws during the celebration. But that raises the question of why bare breasts are OK during Fantasy Fest but not during the rest of the year.
Calls for selective enforcement are often the sign of a bad law. And if the commissioner really wanted to fight for individual rights, he would call for the abolition of the sexist law that bans women but not men from baring their chests.
You can't lay the entire blame for the unequal application of laws at the doorstep of the police, code enforcement officers and others who selectively enforce them. Obviously, these public servants are merely doing the will of our city leaders, or else there would be an outcry and demands for change.
It's up to our elected officials to decide whether the new laws they pass are truly necessary. And if an existing law is not going to be enforced consistently and fairly, they should take it off the books.