The whip, for centuries, was a tool to punish criminals. But, unfortunately, as of this year, cracking a whip will make you a criminal in certain parts of Reno.
In mid-October, Reno’s city council voted 6 to 1 to ban the possession or use of whips downtown.
If you want to carry a whip near Reno’s Riverwalk or in Midtown or Idylwild Park, you will, from now on, need a whip permit. And anywhere within city limits, it is now a crime to use a whip in such a way that might “injure, annoy, interfere with, or endanger the comfort, repose, health, peace or safety of others.”
While the policy question here is Should one need a permit to carry a whip downtown?, the more interesting question is: What on Earth moved a city council in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-one to pass a whip ban?
Well, Reno is different from other cities. Moreso than in, say, San Francisco or Cleveland, there are many reasons why one might carry a whip around Reno. Reno is cowboy country, and nothing focuses the mind of a large ungulate like the sharp crack made when the tip of a whip travels faster than the speed of sound, creating a sonic boom.
That crack-boom itself is a problem. Reno Police Chief Jason Soto says that residents confuse the boom for a gunshot and then call the police to report it. When the police arrive on the scene, they find a Renoite cracking the leather.
Whips, of course, are also useful as weapons, and the police say that fights sometimes break out on Reno’s streets involving at least the threat of a whipping.
Some see the whip ban as an attack on Reno’s most vulnerable, though. The sole vote against the ban, Ward 1 Councilwoman Jenny Brekhus, argued that concentrating on downtown was discrimination against the urban population.
Specifically, the homeless of Reno have long relied on whips. Paul Espinoza, who lives on the banks of Reno’s Truckee River, says that “whips are a form of community signaling, warning others of possible dangers,” such as incoming police or suspicious people, according to one local outlet. Espinoza, who makes his own whips, says women living on the streets use the whips for self-defense.
Reno police, it sounds like, will soon corral all these whips. In a few years, the council will need to find something new to ban.
