THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, April 18, 1995                TAG: 9504180012
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A10  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   49 lines

NORFOLK HAS RIGHT TO CURB ABUSERS OF ITS PARKS KEEP THE ANTI-CRUISING FEE

A $1-per-car fee at Norfolk's Northside Park to discourage cruising has been denounced as racist, prompting investigation by the Justice Department. Nonsense.

Public parks and recreation facilities are designed to be used by all citizens. But when one variety of amusement spoils the fun of others, something's got to give.

Cruising is said to be a social rite for some, but it becomes a social wrong when it destroys the quiet enjoyment of others. The city is fully within its rights to take steps to curb it. Cruising is no different from a whole range of obnoxious behaviors in public places that can legally be regulated.

The issue isn't differing mores, but simple good manners. Cruisers are welcome to use the park, and even to cruise it - as pedestrians. But they do not have the right to clog its roads, intrude noisily upon others or become a public nuisance.

There is no evidence the fee was adopted to disciminate against blacks. Allegations that the fee has been charged selectively to blacks and not whites are unproven. The city needs to take care to levy the toll in a way that is scrupulously fair and colorblind. But the policy itself is clearly not racist; it's cruise-ist.

Such a fee has not been instituted at other city parks only because cruising hasn't become a problem at them. If it does, similar steps will undoubtedly be taken - and should be. The ideal solution might be to reconfigure the park to prevent the driving of endless laps. That's been proposed, but in the meantime using a fee to make the practice prohibitively expensive isn't a bad alternative.

The city is clearly doing the right thing by trying to maintain Northside Park as a facility where the recreation of the many is not ruined by the self-centered behavior of a few. The Justice Department needs to find some actual injustices to investigate and quit wasting time on this chimera.

And the cruisers need to find a way to have fun and show off that doesn't disrupt their neighbors' pleasures, or - if they must cruise - find somewhere else to do it. Of course, if annoying other people is a large part of the fun, that's a pleasure they will have to learn to live without. by CNB