If there's any North Texas suburb known for having a healthy amount of pedestrian activity -- Wait, is there? -- it's definitely not Frisco.
Frisco is better suited for people in cars. But while the city's sidewalks tend to be empty, it appears that the city is dealing with another, more sinister type of pedestrian: median-walkers.
The Frisco City Council just passed an ordinance that bans people from "stopping, standing, walking, running and/or otherwise entering in and/or upon a median."
The ordinance makes exceptions for people who need to run across the street in an emergency, and for law enforcement officers. Which raised a question: Who else would be hanging out in a median? Do people just chill there with their sun chairs when they need to relax? Are median hang-outs the new cool rich kid activity? (Cool readers: Please return our goddamn calls and let us know where this weekend's median hangout is at.)
Or maybe this is about something else? There is one person who has definitely stood on a Frisco median. Ron Martin, aka the Frisco sign-holder, whom we introduced you to a few months ago. Frisco arrested him for ruining a cop's speed trap by holding a "Police Ahead" sign. He waved the sign at passing motorists while standing in -- wait for it -- a median. The city was forced to let the case go when they couldn't figure out the actual legal reason for why were charging him with a crime. It happens.
It turns out, it's perfectly legal to warn people about speed traps. But now, if Martin tries to ruin speed traps again, he'll definitely be running afoul of Frisco's anti-median ordinance.
Well played, Frisco.
"What they're doing, it's just like third grade but on a political level," Martin tells Unfair Park.
Frisco Police Chief John Bruce pushed for the ordinance at Tuesday's City Council meeting. He vaguely mentioned that his department had arrested someone who stood in a median but didn't indicate who that person was. "Do you want people to be able to stand in medians without having a legitimate reason to be there or not?" Bruce asked the council during the meeting.
Martin has maintained from the beginning that he was only holding the sign after he saw a motorcycle officer parked in what he described was an unsafe position, supposedly facing oncoming traffic in the entrance of Frisco's Warren Sports Complex. And if he sees an officer parked like that again, he says, he's not going to let the city's new anti-median ordinance stop him from warning people about it.
"If I see that there's people in immediate danger, I don't really care about a city ordinance," he says.
