LOS ANGELES — In a city of seemingly endless highways — with its daily parade of car accidents, frustrating traffic jams and aggressive drivers — the Los Angeles Police Department these days is training its sights on a different road menace: jaywalkers.

It is not quite “Dragnet,” but the Police Department in recent weeks has issued dozens of tickets to workers, shoppers and tourists for illegally crossing the street in downtown Los Angeles. And the crackdown is raising questions about whether the authorities are taking sides with the long-dominant automobile here at the very time when a pedestrian culture is taking off, fueled by the burst of new offices, condominiums, hotels and restaurants rising in downtown Los Angeles.

“We have to encourage this, not discourage this,” said Brigham Yen, who writes a blog on downtown development, as he stood at a bustling corner in the city’s financial district at lunchtime the other day, casting an eye around for a police officer in the shadows. “We should let pedestrians in L.A. flourish. We shouldn’t penalize it.”

The police say they are simply trying to maintain order at a time when downtown Los Angeles, once a place of urban tumbleweeds and the homeless, is teeming with people competing for pavement with automobiles. “There’s a huge influx of folks that come into the downtown area,” said Sgt. Larry Delgado of the Central Traffic Division. “If you go out there, you are going to see enforcement.”