Persoanlly I would make my choice and get out of NYC. Why support that type of enviroment or paychecks.

I like automation mainly because I have a choice I can drive and loose some liberties or I can ride a bicycle and have more freedoms.

Rich

Yes, I've seen the videos where cops get assaulted for pulling over cars. And yet... pulling over cars is their job.

If NYC has a separate grade of law enforcenent service, a TEA, who's neither trained nor equipped to do that particular job, I understand. We all saw what happened to those two auxiliaries last week in the Village, and no one wants to see it again.

But I will not stand for anyone telling me that a full-fledged, armed police officer shouldn't be pulling people for moving violations -- not because it's dangerous, not because they'd have to go to court. If that logic prevails, why do we have police in the first place?

Yet that's what I see, all the time. Cops standing by amid illegal (posted) honking, blocking the box, speeding, and yes, wrong-way cyclists.

Well, with all those Dahmers driving around, we certainly wouldn't want cops pulling them over!

Oh, wait, bad driving kills way more people than Jeffery Dahmer AND his twin. Hmm...

Butthead was working the counter in a burger joint. A customer came up and asked, "do you guys make your milkshakes with ice cream and milk, or do you use that artificial mix?" Butthead stood blinking for a second, and said "uh, we have vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry."

THAT is precisely what bureaucrats do almost every time I have to talk to or write to one of them. They just hear a couple of keywords, rather than what I'm actually saying, and reply with one of a set of stock answers--not an actual response to my concern. It's so common that I simply expect it now.

In your letter, Komanoff, you reported "x," and asked "y," and then you even put in a good word for one of the TEAs.

"Traffic Supervisor III, in her response, decided that you didn't ask "y," but some other question, and in fact were specifically complaining about the officers. Then she took fairly significant action you didn't ask her to--running a background check, for heaven's sake?

In writing this comment, I was spending several minutes trying to explain the psychology behind that kind of misdirected thinking, but seriously, that scene from Beavis and Butthead demonstrates it way more concisely.

And after everything, "Traffic Supervisor III" even treated the two TEAs with bureaucrat-speak: she "reminded them" of their obligations under that PR-agency-sounding, stale, old "CPR" stuff. And I'll bet that resulted NOT in improving the TEAs' attitude toward the public, but actually making it just a little bit worse--they probably thought, "great, now our time is being wasted with management-speak because some private citizen lodged some b.s. complaint against us." And you didn't even lodge a b.s. complaint! It's amazing, isn't it?!

Admit it, Spud: You work in New York City government or some other massive, unaccountable bureaucracy that breeds low expectations and profoundly deep cynicism, right?

This is flat-out silly. The response was apparent even without the NYPD letter:

Pulling over a driver is not the same as issuing a parking ticket to a car. Haven't you seen those cop video shows where the officer walks up to a stopped car and is met by a .45 slug to the chest? Any driver might be an escaped felon evading arrest. That truck driver might have been Jeffrey Dahmer's evil twin for all you know. To expect any old traffic enforcement officer to pull over a car is just ignorant.

In the past I have objected to the use of red light cameras on the grounds of personal liberty. But when there is absolutely no attempt to enforce the law by uniformed officers I become more sympathetic to automated means. (Specifically, I'm thinking of traffic that passes in front of schools, parks, and playgrounds.)

Well, I missed out on the New York of the 70's and 80's where residents pulled their hair out demanding police response to drug dealers- I guess this is my chance to feel what it was like.

(conjecture plus old info to follow->) The reasoning relates to both conflict avoidance (Traffic agents get assaulted frequently) and for administrative reasons: vast amounts of moving violations, especially "block the box" movers are challenged in court, losing an Agent for a the day.

But what about the ones I see who are clearly on traffic control duty for a particular intersection (96th and 1st is a good place to spot this) and just stand there as driver after driver commits the most blatant block-the-box violations?