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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPut your feet up on an empty NYC subway car, go to jail
NY Times on Saturday will have this story "Relax, if You Want, but Dont Put Your Feet Up" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/nyregion/minor-offense-on-ny-subway-can-bring-ticket-or-handcuffs.html?pagewanted=all). It opens with the anecdote of a man who was jailed for 12 hours and missed work simply because he put his feet on another seat in an empty subway car. In the article, he said: "I can see if it was rush hour, but there was no one else on the train. Why not just say, Put your feet down? I lost a day of work because of their pettiness."
The article further explains: "Seven years ago, rule 1050(7)(J) of the citys transit code criminalized what was once simply bad etiquette: passengers putting their feet on a subway seat. They also cannot take up more than one seat if it interferes with other passengers comfort, nor can they block movement on a subway by doing something like standing too close to the doors." Also: "In interviews, public defenders who represent many of the passengers arrested say their clients tend to be among the working class, often kitchen workers who are exhausted as they begin or end long shifts at Manhattan restaurants. Lawyers say many of the cases originate on the F train at the Rockefeller Center stop."
Yep, police profiling at work once again. "Steven Banks, the chief attorney for the citys Legal Aid Society, which represents many riders arrested for seat violations, suggested that police officers who make arrests for seat violations are driven by the prospect of overtime pay and the pressure to produce arrests periodically...One police officer who works in the transit system acknowledged that there were a lot of petty arrests, but he said that officers were under pressure from supervisors to bring in one collar each month. The officer, speaking anonymously, was generally disdainful of making arrests for seat violations, but pointed out that stopping people on these charges allowed officers to check them for outstanding warrants."
One diabetic man who put his leg up for an insulin injection and then was denied insulin while in jail, and the man later got $150k from NYC.
Closing the article is the case of one arrest leading to the deportation this year of someone who had a deportation order put on him back in 2002. The deported man worked at Midtown Manhattan French restaurant Bistro Vendome. But no word whether Bistro Vendome was punished for hiring the immigrant in the first place.
winstars
(4,213 posts)It's right under Radio City and Rockerfeller Center, and its big,(???) kinda new and easy for the cops to work out of. What do the cops do just wait at that station during off-peak hours and as the trains roll up and stop, the cops grab the "offender" off the train and bring them "upstairs" and fuck with them???
Classic lazy freakin' NYPD bullshit
canetoad
(17,072 posts)Cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.
OTOH, there are very good reasons for enforcing the no-feet-on-seats rule on public transport. Shoes can be dirty, oily, sticky with chewing gum or covered in dog shit. People sometimes use PT in clean clothes.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Unless of course you have joined the 1%, at which time you get your "get out of jail free" card.
think
(11,641 posts)ProgressiveEconomist
(5,818 posts)minorities years ago. On the pretext that "they resemble crime suspects", the NYPD now "stop and frisk" at the rate of more than 600,000 random people a year, and growing. Ten percent of these actions result in arrest, mainly for marijuana possession. See http://www.vocal-ny.org/media-coverage/major-ap-story-on-link-between-stop-and-frisks-and-illegal-marijuana-arrests/ .
IMO this is institutionalized racism as serious as the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission in the 1960s.
LuvNewcastle
(16,813 posts)When the police are arresting people for such petty shit, it's apparent to me that there aren't enough real crimes to justify the size of their force. Also, if the city council has enough time to enact such trivial laws, maybe the city could be served as well by fewer of them.
izquierdista
(11,689 posts)But the cops don't get past Goldman Sach's receptionist.
LetTimmySmoke
(1,202 posts)Darth_Kitten
(14,192 posts)Yes, a tad extreme, but he made a choice, and he lost a day of work due to his own actions.
You get all kinds on subways and buses.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)We're becoming like Singapore, where you get fined for chewing gum.
I say we should all go put our feet up on that subway, then challenge it with a jury trial, and then challenge the CONSTITUTIONALITY of such punishments under the 8th Amendment. We can break this law by breaking the court system, then break it Constitutionally.
Pity I don't live there...