When everything's illegal, we're all outlaws.

You can't get away with murder in Los Angeles. But after that, the odds start to change pretty fast.

The city's routine failure to enforce an ordinance that prohibits large SUVs from driving on residential streets, outlined in a recent edition of the online magazine Slate, is only the latest example of how Angelenos can skirt the law in all kinds of ways.

They're jaywalking, building illegal guesthouses in their garages, swiping cutlery from restaurants, using office postage to mail family pictures, making right turns into traffic, smoking in restricted areas, taking up two parking spaces, violating noise ordinances and paying maids and gardeners without reporting it to the Internal Revenue Service.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't exactly set a great example when he was reported Fast week to have smoked a cigar in a non-smoking suite in Santa Fe, N.M.

As could be expected, there are various explanations for the miscreant behavior--mostly boiled down to the fact that many folks, especially in L.A., feel the low-level rules don't apply to them and, perhaps just as important, that they won't be caught.

"It comes from narcissism," said Nancy Irwin, an L.A. therapist in private practice. "This is a city that draws a lot of entertainers and there are a lot of big egos here. They start competing with each other and then it really builds up into a frenzy."

Breaking the law, even a minor one, could be more than a matter of manners and egos.

William Bratton, selected as L.A. police chief in 2002, has made no secret of wanting to focus on minor mischief in an effort to reduce the number of larger crimes.

"The idea," said Officer Eduardo Funes, an LAPD spokesman, "is that if you take care of many smaller, enforceable codes, the bigger problems can sometimes be avoided."

For instance, juveniles are not supposed to be on the streets without adult supervision in the city of Los Angeles after 10 p.m., with exceptions for those who may be on their way home from the movies or other activities.

"When young people are unsupervised and gathering late at night, the chances are that something not good is going to come out of that," said Funes. "Somebody's going to say, 'Let's go drinking,' which might turn into beatings, and beatings turn into homicides. If you enforce the curfew law vigorously, it probably prevents other crimes from being committed."

'But I'm from New York!'

James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling detailed this idea in a landmark article in Atlantic Monthly magazine. They noted that a neighborhood with lots of broken windows suggests the kind of neglect that encourages more windows to be broken. Wiping out little crimes may prevent further crimes from happening.

Of course, the "broken windows" theory goes only so far, considering that someone caught jaywalking doesn't usually move onto bigger crimes.

Nancy can still remember the day she was cited by a Los Angeles police officer for standing on a painted median that a car was illegally using as a turning lane. She was ticketed for impeding the flow of traffic.

"I was shocked," said the lawyer, who didn't want her last name used. "When I sputtered to the young officer, 'But I'm from New York!' he responded, 'Well, I'm sure they don't permit jaywalking in New York either.' Before I could stop myself I replied, 'You've obviously never been there!' A ticket for jaywalking seemed preposterous, and it still does."

Actually, there were 22,618 pedestrian citations issued in 2003, according to the LAPD, which breaks out to one violation per 177 residents. Given that L.A. has only 9,200 police officers to patrol 467 square miles--and that murder and other mayhem take precedence over jaywalking--those are pretty good odds for pedestrians to cross with impunity.

"When people are cited for minor infractions, they often employ a defense mechanism," said Funes. "Frequently, when you stop somebody for jaywalking, the attitude is, 'I'm an adult, I know how to cross the street. Who are you to tell me to cross the street?' Some are receptive to the fact that they know what they did was illegal. Other times, they think you're picking on them."

Sometimes, enforcement never reaches that point. The L.A. ordinance cited by Slate's Senior Editor Andy Bowers is a case in point.

It is illegal to drive vehicles weighing more than 6,000 pounds on streets where, according to the municipal code, they would "cause traffic congestion, create a hazard to life or property, or detrimentally affect public welfare, and when alternate routes are available." The 6,000-pound restriction was originally aimed at covering trucks, but with the advent of SUVs, it now covers Cadillac Escalades, Ford Excursions and the ubiquitous Hummer. (The law is also in place in Santa Monica and Pasadena.)

"This isn't an arbitrary weight limit," Bowers writes. "Six thousand pounds has long been a recognized dividing line between light and heavy trucks.... But local officials either don't realize they've banned big SUVs, or they're hoping no one will make a stink." (In L.A., exceptions are given to emergency vehicles and commercial vehicles such as moving and delivery trucks.)

The ordinance is pretty much never enforced.

"The only way it could be enforced is if officers were given a list of cars and models and if they see them on a residential street they would pull them over," said P. Christopher Ardalan, an attorney with Ardalan & Associates in Sherman Oaks. "The problem with that is, to me, it sounds like a ridiculous law. The money the city has got to pay to enforce it outweighs whatever paving issues there are on the street. They've got bigger fish to fry."

Tolerant about misdeeds

Ardalan also isn't bothered by other minor infractions of life, such as using an office postage meter or overnight delivery service for personal correspondence.

"It may in one sense be illegal, but they don't have bad intentions," he said. "The reason people do it is because they can and the chance of getting prosecuted is slim."

Sometimes, he said, it's better for employers to exercise caution in the workplace.

"Are they going to get upset and fire a valuable employee because the employee is using stamps costing $4 a month to the employer?" he asked. "The employer is going to hurt his credibility because they'll think, 'Oh my God, this guy's so cheap, I do all this work and he's on me because of stamps.'"

Such restraint is also the rule among restaurant owners, who routinely must replace items that get pilfered at the tables and in restrooms.

"I'm sure we lose flower vases and salt and pepper shakers," said Mike Green, general manager of the Pacific Dining Car in Los Angeles. "I'm sure we lose cloth towels that we use in the restrooms, and I'm sure that we lose some of them to pilferage. But we don't make too big a deal of out if because if we were really concerned about it, we wouldn't have those nice things."

What Green wants to avoid is mistakenly accusing patrons of thievery. "You really want to make sure before you do anything because you'll lose customers," he said.

But while breaking some of these laws might seem innocuous, there can be serious consequences.

Illegally building a guesthouse in a garage can be dangerous, said Bob Steinbach, a spokesman for the City of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. He noted that the buildings might not have water heaters, the proper roofing structure or enough ventilation or heat.

"It's not always about enforcing for the sake of the fact that the code says you can't have it," Steinbach said.

As for jaywalking, Funes said, "I don't know anyone who could say that a jaywalker is going to be a robber, but if you live your life with disregard to the consequence of breaking laws and if you defy authority, there may come a time when that would be detrimental to your life."