Virginia activist charged with vandalism after drawing crosswalk at intersection

The Guardian

04-06-2025

After officials in Charlottesville, Virginia, reportedly ignored his pleas to implement a pedestrian crosswalk at a dangerous intersection, traffic safety activist Kevin Cox drew a crossing with chalk.
Authorities responded by covering Cox's handiwork with black paint and charging him with vandalism in a case that evidently demonstrates how acrimonious relations can sometimes get between local government bureaucrats in the US and those who say they are trying to hold them to account.
As the Charlottesville news station WVIR put it, Cox is well known in the community for his outspoken pedestrian safety advocacy. He had recently focused his efforts on a municipal intersection where a 64-year-old woman was struck by a motorist and killed while trying to cross the road to get to work in October.
Cox said he had since pleaded with city officials to lay down a crosswalk at that intersection. Those efforts went nowhere, so he said he took a line marker as well as a can of spray chalk to fashion a makeshift crosswalk on 17 May – a Saturday – as a crowd of onlookers cheered him.
He also reportedly wrote an email to Charlottesville's city manager which read: 'There is a marked crosswalk now [at the intersection in question] in spite of you … It's chalk[,] not paint[.] Please replace it with a real one.'
Police subsequently called Cox and accused him of committing vandalism. He soon surrendered and was booked with intentional destruction of property, which carries up to a year in jail as well as a maximum fine of $2,500, WVIR reported.
A police report that Cox shared with the news station alleged that officers were unable to determine whether his improvised crosswalk had been created with permanent paint. Officials determined the crosswalk could not be removed, so city workers covered it with black paint.
Cox has gotten a lawyer and was given a trial date tentatively scheduled for 14 July.
'They have provoked me,' Cox told WVIR. 'It's not going to stop me.
'This is a common cause for many people in the city. It's all about our day-to-day quality of life on the streets and the sidewalks, and everyone is affected by that.'
A Charlottesville municipal spokesperson said on Tuesday that the city would not comment on the case against Cox because it was pending.
Many know Charlottesville as the site of the unrelated 2017 white supremacist rally objecting to the removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee. A demonstrator protesting against the white supremacists was murdered by a neo-Nazi sympathizer who intentionally drove a car into her as well as others.