Blame Game

A Bronx man got a summons for sitting on a milk crate -- and he wasn't even smoking.

He says the cop told him "Don't blame me, blame Bloomberg."

"Don't Blame the Cop" is also the theme of a series of radio ads that the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association launched yesterday. They're urging New Yorkers to blame the mayor for the increase in parking and traffic tickets (nothing about milk crates).

The public ought to blame them both.

Comments

[None]

Here's the item from yesterday's Post:

Cops have also slapped straphangers with a staggering 49,718 summonses for quality-of-life violations this year - something that doesn't please all riders.

Josh Kaufmann, 31, a high-school teacher from Queens, said he was hit with a $50 fine two weeks ago while riding the F train for putting his feet up on an empty seat.

"The train was basically empty when I decided to put my leg up across a seat," he said.

That's when a cop at the Sutphin Boulevard station spotted him and gave him a fine for "obstructive seating."

Under TA rules, it is against the law to "occupy more than one seat."

"I was shocked," Kaufmann said. "I know the city needs money, but to go after me for this was ridiculous."

That feeling was echoed last week by Patrolmen's Benevolent Association president Pat Lynch, who said cops have turned into "summons machines" to raise money for the cash-strapped city.

Lynch said parking and quality-of-life summonses written by cops totaled 1.2 million as of last month - a 6.7 percent increase since last year.

The NYPD has called the increase in summonses "productivity goals" - not quotas.

Link here: http://www.nypost.com/seven/05192003/news/regionalnews/76060.htm

[geophile]

Don't mind my off-topic post, BTW. I'm still pissed at that smoking ban.

[david f]

hey Jay D!

excellent johnny dangerously reference! great movie.

cheers,
drf

[MP]

Too bad New Yorker's don't want to lay off government employees, refuse to stop providing certain social services, refuse to cut into things like fire houses or anything else deemed "essential", and feel that they are entitled to money from the Federal gov't. I should just quit my job and get the hell outta here.

[Anonymous]

NYers are a bunch of lefty commies, better to just nuke the place and start over, heheh.

[geophile]

NYC is a perfect example of the ideological bankruptcy of the two party system, whereby a Republican mayor can act like the Nazi Republicans are so often accused of being, and get away with it because he's actually a left-liberal former Democrat. Bloomberg has thus divided and conquered potential opposition. Republicans can't complain, because their mayor still has an "R" in front of his name, while Democrats are made politically complacent.

[Anonymous]

Are the police trying to push that trotskyist mindframe that to make things better, they have to first be made orders of magnitude worse, and provoke mass revolution?

Or at minimum election of another mayor?

[ron]

yeah seriously, cant police think for themselves? bottom up reform can sometimes work better than top down.

[Anonymous]

Bloomberg should just order some Robocops from OCP, heheh.

[Eric]

I was planning on moving to Manhattan later this year. Between the property tax hike, the sales tax hike, the gasoline tax hike, the income tax hike, the toll increases for the tunnels and bridges, and the ticket obsession, Bloomberg and Pataki have made me rethink. God knows how I'd feel if I was a smoker.

[Croesus]

They need to re-animate Stuyvesant and make him mayor. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Come on over to Hoboken y'all! I'll be at Scotland Yard smoking a cigarette and listening to great blues musicians who are here cause all the cool blues bars in NYC are closed.

[Anonymous]

And you thought Snake Plissken was just a fantasy character?

[David]

Yes, blame them both. After all, shouldn't we encourage police officers to pick and choose which laws they feel like enforcing?

[geophile]

The police could certainly get together and condemn this through their union or something, like the cops in Nevada did with marijuana laws, before they were brow-beaten by puritans. Still, I have to feel sorry for them just a little bit. Sure they get ridiculous overtime pay sometimes, but every new law of intrusion that gets passed means more people they have to confront, raising the chance of running in to some psychopath who literally will not give up his cig till it's pried from his cold, dead fingers. Just look at that bouncer that was murdered.

[scott]

And they aren't launching a recall effort because?....

[Jay D]

My Mother sat on a milk crate once...ONCE.

[Croesus]

Isn't Bloomberg just extending what Guiliani already started?

[Brian]

Hey...New Yorkers should be thankful that their city is now so safe that the police have time to cite people for "unauthorized use of milk crates". I mean, I'm assuming that no one was getting robbed, raped, or murdered while Mr. Taveras was caught terrorizing molded plastic with his ass, right?

[None]

I recently had to take off from work to be summoned to Staten Island criminal court to go in front of a judge and prosecutor for the crime of smoking at a Staten Island Railway station. My fine was either $25 or FIVE days in jail (!). When my friends and I received our summons, not one but two cops said that we have Bloomberg to "thank" for the tickets. There is anecdotal evidence and a form of official acknowledgment (quoted in yesterday's NY Post in a story about a teacher who was given a ticket for putting his feet up on a subway seat) that the cops are filling quotas. It almost seems like the police are trying to get back at a mayoral directive by being as idiotic as possible.

[LGD]

Yeah I'd say that the police are right in doing this. Discretion is all well and good, but I DO think that the point needs to be made that when officers have to use discretion to ignore half the laws out there on a daily basis so regular citizens can get on with theri lives something is out of whack. Sucks for those fined and it shouldn't have to happen, but its probably the best way to get the point across.

[Russ]

LGD, what point is that?

To paraphrase my mom, "Would you jump in the Hudson River if the mayor told you to?"

[BJ]

"NYers are a bunch of lefty commies, better to just nuke the place and start over, heheh."

Ummmm...don't give al Qaida any ideas there...

[Bromberg Brian]

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DATE: 01/25/2004 02:13:19
In this grand B movie we call life, there is always a girl.