Already faced with a ban on riding and parking bikes in the arcades of Main Quad, students received news of another crackdown on Friday, with an email reporting increased police ticketing for running stop signs and listening to iPods while biking.

Representatives from the Department of Public Safety, however, assured The Daily that police enforcement of bike rules on Friday was no different than on any other day.

“There has been no increase [in enforcement] that I know of,” said Sgt. Al James on Sunday.

Yet on Friday, Zach Chandler, a staff member at the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, wrote an email, subsequently forwarded to dozens of dorm chatlists, warning students of the “dragnet on campus.”

“I stopped to ask one of the sheriffs what was going on, and he told me that the fines are equivalent to the same offense while driving a car,” Chandler wrote in the email.

The California Vehicle Code states that bicycle riders have the same rights and responsibilities as motor vehicle drivers do and are therefore subject to the same citations and fines, which are often hundreds of dollars.

“You may be cited for running stop signs, riding at an unsafe speed for conditions, riding on the wrong side of the road or upon sidewalks, wearing headphones while riding and not having legal brakes,” the Department of Public Safety Web site reads.

Freshman Laura Brignone was stopped by a police officer at the intersection of Santa Teresa St. and Lomita Dr. but did not receive a ticket, which she attributed that to the fact that “the police officer was nice and I’m a freshman.”

The officer told Brignone that the increased enforcement was due to several bike accidents earlier in the week, in which students were taken to the hospital.

Sgt. James said that he had not heard of an increase in bicycle accidents in the past week. “But,” he said, “we have accidents all the time.”

Brignone said the officer gave her a list of the most common laws broken by bicyclists and a warning not to run any more stop signs.

According to Sgt. David Lee, bicycle regulations are enforced all year.

“We make it a habit of doing enforcement each week in different locations and at different times,” he said.

James echoed those comments.

“There’s nothing new about bicycle violation enforcement,” he said. “We’ve been enforcing these laws for many years.”

He acknowledged that there is often an increase in enforcement if officers are noticing a lot of violations or when new students arrive.

Students, however, said that they have not witnessed the strict enforcement of these regulations.

“I bike through stop signs all the time, and I’ve never gotten stopped,” said sophomore Anish Mitra.

James warned that violations could be enforced at any time.

“It just depends if there are officers out there who have time to do it,” he said, “because we’re a very busy department.”