Of course the typical "journalist" of today is innumerate (lacking basic knowledge of mathematics, for any "journalists" who may be reading this), so of course it never occurred to the incurious writers of the article to ask the question, "what percentage of jaywalkers in that area are 'black people'?".
What if 90% of jaywalkers in that area were 'black people' but only about half of the citations were given to 'black people'? Would these same "journalists" then be speculating that the police were biased against 'non-black people'? Of course not. These "journalists" write their fiction based on prejudicial narratives, which is to say that they, like many or most "journalists" these days, intentionally write falsehoods (that's a polite say of saying that they write deliberate lies, for the sake of any "journalists" who may be reading this).
Naturally, with the apparent low level of curiosity, education, and native intellect of "journalists" such as Anita Chabria, Nashelly Chavez and Phillip Reese, one would expect to see exactly the poor quality of work and left-wing political bias that is so clearly on display here and elsewhere in The Sacremento Bee.
That said, the high fines for jaywalking are an outrage, and the government idiots who instituted those outrageous fines ought to be raked over the coals (too bad we no longer have 'stocks' where outraged citizens can pelt government idiots and government criminals with rotten eggs and rotten tomatoes, in order to encourage them to act more wisely in the future).
Jaywalking is serious because our roads are designed to function a certain way and in WASP cultures they function very well; cruising in the fast/passing lane is another example of this breaking down (often with white perps). You can’t half one segment of the population driving according to the rules and another putting everyone’s lives at risk by ignoring them. Jaywalking is serious in NYC as well (and on many streets they have barriers to prevent it) because nothing works if people move through vehicle traffic like migrating wildebeests...
Nowadays expecting anything civilized from urbanized blacks is considered racism; this includes learning, working, registering/insuring vehicles, and now obeying traffic signals and laws.