Zero Tolerance Fridays 6
My friend X used to hold a lot of barbecues on the street in front of his ground floor apartment, but this summer he’s thinking it might not be such a good idea. Police patrols have increased in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and he’s worried his guest might get in trouble with the police.
Paranoid perhaps, but it’s only a couple of weeks ago that his roommate was fined $25 dollars for walking quietly from the Chinese restaurant across the street to his home with a beer in his hand. X is an ordinarily upstanding citizen (with a beard), but instead of feeling protected by the police, he feels on edge, supervised, and at risk of being prosecuted for everyday behavior.
Earlier this month, when one of his roommates jumped a Subway turnstile late at night (he was 5 cents short on his Metro card), he was seized by plain clothes police officers and incarcerated for nearly 24 hours with nothing to eat but a cheese sandwich and a carton of milk. It was “zero tolerance Friday” the officers said (whatever that means), and apparently that warranted keeping him in a cell until 11pm the next day.
X himself received the same treatment for another silly misdemeanor about six months ago, and it will probably be on his record for ages. Granted, its illegal to jump turnstiles and drink booze on the street, but I’ve been hearing so many stories lately of authorities in New York taking disciplinary measures that are totally out of proportion with the crime. Being free of crime is nice, but so is being free of unnecessary prosecution.
At my local post office, I was chatting with the attendant and a couple of people in line, who said they had gone for a walk in Prospect Park after hours (not knowing it was illegal to walk in there after dark) and had ended up with a court summons. Same for two women who had sat on a bench in an empty playground, and got in trouble because apparently adults are required to have children with them in playgrounds at all times. All this nit-picking about the rules is one thing, but harassing people who aren’t hurting or disturbing others is just ridiculous.
My own neighborhood has gone through quite a transformation lately. Boutiques and bike lanes have been introduced on Vanderbilt Ave, and they are planting greenery in the middle of what previously seemed like an SUV race course. I spoke to a shop-owner on Vanderbilt on Saturday, who said she almost never used the lock and buzzer on her door that felt like a necessity only a couple of years ago. We chatted a while, and she asked me whether I was a bike-rider. I confirmed, and she surreptitiously passed me four bright red stickers, saying I should be “very careful” when I used them.
The stickers are for a campaign which promotes zero tolerance for cars parked in bike lanes. When you see one, you’re supposed to glue a sticker on the car with the web address of iparkedinabikelane.org. I don’t think I would ever risk getting beaten up by an SUV owner in order to make a point about how dangerous it is for bikes to loop around a parked car in the middle of the street, but as far as vigilante activism goes, it is pretty creative. I wonder how many hours in jail the police would determine this sort of illicit behavior is worth?
I totally got a ticket for open container the other day! Officer Dang – WTF?
Don’t see what your problem is, mate. Don’t steal from public transport (by jumping over the turnstiles), don’t be an anti-social ass (by barbecuing in the street and making nasty smells for the entire neighbourhood)….as for drinking in the street, well, you Americans have always been a bit odd about alcohol, but the way to deal with that is lobby your representatives to change the law….don’t just break it (or, break it if you want, but you know what the punishment is anyway…..as we would have it: “Don’t do the crime if you are too wet to serve the time!”.
Dude, what’s the point of getting a ticket if you can’t bitch about it??
Awesome article. I got fined by my local Transit Authority a few years ago (205$) for not having the appropriate student transit identification (not that i wasn’t a student, but that I didn’t get ID from THEM), and it burned me pretty bad.
Those stickers sound great. Downtown Montreal just got a bike lane straight through it, and it’s taking a while for the drivers AND pedestrians to get used to it (people are always walking into the path when only looking out for cars), but someone parking in the bike lane is so stupid… Anyway, you’re right, temporary imprisonment of people drinking beers in the street makes the U.S. seem MORE like a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, not less.
This is X here.
To Mr. Owen: Abiding by the law or not isn’t the point. Yes, my friend shouldn’t have jumped the turnstile. But, should he have gone to jail for 24 hours and endured harassment by the police?
Another new example, another friend of mine was recently arrested for drinking in public and ended up spending FOUR DAYS in jail because the cops kept ‘losing his paperwork’ and when he finally got to see his court-appointed defender he was informed that he was also being charged with attempted destruction of evidence (in his surprise of being confronted by the police he dropped the bottle) and with possession of CRACK COCAINE (which he certainly wasnt carrying). These types of things happen on a daily basis.
I really can’t stand that saying of ‘dont do the crime if you cant serve the time’. The rules of the game are rigged and are being executed in an unfair manner. Moreover, I find that to be very close to the argument of defenders of violations of the fourth amendment rights: “if you have nothing to hide then what do you have to worry about?”. These are arguments in support of facism. Moreover, your comment completely ignored Solana’s point about punishment being proportional to the crime. Indeed, the law doesn’t even properly cover this type of treatment as the police manipulate the law and abuse their power using tactics such as these.
Its not just about lobbying my representative to change the law. Its about more than the law, its about a culture gone wrong and this is further evidence that its not just happening here in the US.
Last, how in the hell is it ‘anti-social’ to have a bbq on the street? It seems quite the opposite to me.
just got a tic for walking home through prospect park around 2am, had just walked in off PPSW and got reeled in by the chick cop on the passenger side, then passed on to the tyro on the drivers side. that bitch had it all sewed up. “zero tolerance” “robbers in the park”. well i didn’t see any, and do you think they’d at least escort me out of the park if there’s all these damn robbers around? but no. now i gotta take a day off work to go to court, so the tic is already costing me at least $200. for what? for FUCKING WHAT??? to make me even more edgy around cops? to legally mug me? make me fear the park i grew up in? pigfuckingbastards; i spit in your blind eyes.