[cafard]

In fifty-plus years of walking around in the cities and suburbs of the US, I have never seen anyone get a citation for jaywalking, though I know it happens now and then.

My impression is that the police do it now and then to hassle persons they otherwise disapprove of or dislike. The writer Gary Wills once wrote of some DC police giving him a jaywalking ticket, apparently because he thought that a look at their car before he crossed implied disrespect. But I pretty routinely jaywalk in the presence of the police without attracting their notice. I'm pretty innocuous in appearance, but I see others do this too.