Do police not understand that this sort of thing undermines respect for the law, and for themselves?
Kate Wilson, 29, said she was nursing a strained calf muscle and propped her right leg up on an empty seat while riding the D train in Borough Park about 1 a.m. Sunday.
The car was sprinkled with about five straphangers, she said, when three cops told her to step off the train at the 36th St. station, just one stop from her home.
“There were empty seats all around the whole car,” she said. “It was ridiculous. It wasn’t a conversation. I felt harassed.”
As one cop began to write her a summons for obstructing seating, Wilson tried to reason with the officers and told them she ran 4 miles through Prospect Park the day before.
“I told them that I had run a race and my leg had been injured,” she said. “But, no, they didn’t care.”
She continued to protest until the officers told her she should “be grateful” she wasn’t getting cuffed, she recalled.
“I asked them if they had bigger fish to fry,” she recalled. “The police officer said, ‘Yeah, but we’re frying this one now.’ ”
So she gets slapped with a $50 fine, misses the next train, and ends up walking home. And predictably, on the walk…
“I walked away with a $50 ticket and didn’t see a single cop along the streets to my home,” she said. “Three cops on the platform and no cops on the street.”
Yes it does.
But she should have known better.
Everyone who lives in NYC and uses mass transit knows that regulations like that only apply in the presence of cops, and even then are semi-optional for the homeless.
When she saw the cops walking by she should have moved her foot, plain and simple, then put it back when they had left. The same if you are eating, or want to put your bag on the seat next to you instead of the filthy floor, or any of a number of other ridiculous things that are issues of politeness rather than worthy of civil fines. (And if that picture is what she was doing, then yes, that is rather rude of her to put her filthy shoe on the seat. Most people in NYC will not sit on good furniture with their street clothes precisely because of things like that in public places.)
As for the complaint about seeing three cops on the platform and none on the streets, that is simply ridiculous. Cops assigned to transit duty and cops assigned to street patrol are under completely different commands, not to mention each precinct having significantly fewer cops than streets. Expecting to see a cop walking down any particular stretch when you are there is beyond unreasonable, especially if you expect it just because you just got a ticket in another location.
maybe she “was” a lefty who has been awakened to reality of starved public sector coffers, authoritarianism, and the ongoing daily harassment of individual citizens for any and all sorts of lame infractions
perhaps there is a new member for our side?
fines are for whites only.. bet you dollars to doughnuts not one black person will ever ever ever get a fine for this…
Hey, choose to live like cattle, don’t be surprised when the ranch hands take a bit out of your hide. Public transportation puts you at the mercy of those riding herd.
Just as Victor Davis Hanson says about the People’s Republic of California, the “authorities” only harass people who look like they are law-abiding and have money.
Where is the fine for putting FOOT/DIRTY SHOE on RESOLUTE DESK?
The average cop probably prefers to pick on normal citizens. We cringe more satisfyingly, and we aren’t likely to shoot them. Go after thugs? A man could get hurt that way!
This could be my observational bias. I try not to go into thug-ridden territory, so I seldom get a chance to see cops picking on them.
I’m sorry about her strained muscles, but she should keep her dirty shoes off the seats that others will sit on. (See photo illustrating the linked article.)
Show me the dirty footprint and you’ll have a point.
Without it, you don’t.