NYPD's Illegal Arrests Include Ticket Sellers As Well As Pot Smokers and Loiterers

Yesterday a state appeals court rebuked the New York Police Department for harassing, citing, and arresting a tourist attraction's ticket sellers. New York Skyride, which has offered simulated 15-minute helicopter tours of the city since 1994, relies on sidewalk ticket sales outside the Empire State Building, where it is located, for most of its business. Last year the NYPD decided that the company needed a "general vendor" license to sell tickets. But as The New York Times reports, "the waiting list for vendor licenses is currently closed, except under special allowances for military veterans." In short: You need a license to do that, and you can't get a license. That was the NYPD's excuse for issuing 14 summonses to Skyride employees and arresting six of them. But in response to a lawsuit by the company, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the NYPD was misinterpreting the vendor license requirement, which applies to sellers of "goods or services":

In arguing that Skyline provides a "service," respondents present a strained and unnatural construction of that term.  When one thinks of a "service," as that word is ordinarily used, things like haircuts, home repair, house cleaning and car washes come to mind. Skyride is more appropriately characterized as a form of entertainment….

Had the City Council intended to include "entertainment" within the reach of the general vending laws, it would have explicitly included that term in the statute…. 

No fair reading of the statute leads to the conclusion that the Skyride experience, or the tickets themselves, constitute "goods or services."

In other words, as Skyline's lawyer, Randy M. Mastro (who was a deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani), told the Times, "It was a crazy thing for the city to do." Yet it was consistent with a pattern of illegal arrests by the NYPD, including bogus pot busts and unconstitutional loitering charges.