Comments on: Civil Servants Behaving Badly, With Deadly Results. What Can Be Done?

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:21:10 +0000

Ben, I agree with you. My comment no. 7 was in response to the automatic “if something is wrong with civil servants, then something is wrong with civil service” line of reasoning that had come up earlier in the thread.

By: Benjamin Kabak

Benjamin Kabak — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:37:32 +0000

Jonathan: What are you talking about? This guy was driving an MTA bus and killed someone with it. He wasn’t driving his own personal car.

An out-of-service bus doesn’t mean that he was off the job.

By: Ben Woosley

Ben Woosley — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:38:59 +0000

Well, at least in the transit case we can take and share more of the sort of pictures which brought attention to the Staten Island driver you picture.

I’ve started a flickr group to bring together some of these pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/mta-malfeasance/

As they say: “Don’t get mad, get video!”

By: Kaja

Kaja — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:22:37 +0000

Mark: Government’s like a bag of bricks. All we gotta do is set it down.

By: Mark Walker

Mark Walker — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:53:55 +0000

K6-III, I agree. To understand how difficult it would be, see this post by Larry Littlefield. I'm not suggesting we accept the status quo. But defining a path to a city residential requirement will be a tough lift and make take generations.

By: K6-III

K6-III — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:39:05 +0000

I realize this would be hard to push through, but how doesn’t it make sense for city workers to be required to live in the city, and police to live in the districts they serve? All the more reason to have the workers care more about the work they do, and a better return on tax investment, with more of the paychecks spent in the city anew.

By: Mr. G.

Mr. G. — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:37:59 +0000

ACCESS-A-RIDE. Is it one word or two? All I can say is that these drivers often behave like they’re behind the wheel of a sports car.

By: AlanKHG

AlanKHG — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:59:40 +0000

Jonathan: most private employment is at-will. If someone fired can’t show they were fired because they were members of a protected class or engaging in protected activities, they can be fired for any reason.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:45:10 +0000

I’m pretty sure that private enterprises are also unable to discipline their employees who kill with an automobile outside of working hours. Assuming no charges are filed, of course.

By: oscarfrye

oscarfrye — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:32:15 +0000

agree with JasonM, although I do see signs of changing attitudes and the public at large finally realizing how they are continually fleeced

By: JasonM

JasonM — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:10:41 +0000

What can be done?

How about all of those blue-state voters realizing that public-employee unions serve no other purpose than to provide themselves with the most egregiously feathered nests, and the public with most abysmal level of public service?

Bien-pensant liberal media ignores this fact out of either ideological selective blindness or tactical political calculation.

“Unionized public employee does something terrible and borderline criminal, receives slap on wrist and fat pension at age 50″ is a dog-bites-man story. It’s astonishing to me that anyone’s even astonished that something like this could happen. Examples could be multiplied ad infinitum, but why not pick a couple from those right-wing propaganda machines, the New Yorker and the LA Times?

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,679507.story
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill

By: Glenn

Glenn — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:53:00 +0000

How many bus drivers are there? 1000? 2000? 170 drivers disciplined could be a huge percentage…

The TWU needs to get on top of this as this sounds like a major issue that could tie up their time in defending union members on an issue that the public has no sympathy for them.

Can bus drivers be individually sued in civil court for wrongful death?

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:45:29 +0000

What about Shami Chaikin, run down and seriously injured by a Parks Department garbage truck last week?

By: mike

mike — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:38:41 +0000

I just had a run-in with an uncivil servant today.

I was riding down the Kent Ave bike lane, and had just avoided the private car of an NYPD employee parked in the lane, when yet another cop (also driving in his private car) was driving towards me!

I told him that he can’t drive in a bike lane. Cop said “yeah, but you’re riding the wrong way”, obviously completely oblivious to the copious lane markings plastered everywhere indicating that it’s a two-way lane I corrected him but he didn’t seem too thrilled to be corrected.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:22:18 +0000

Anytime you are on a bus and see a driver texting or talking on their cell phone, got to this MTA link, http://mta-nyc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/mta_nyc.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php. File a complaint, eventually they are going to get to many complaints to ignore. It shouldn’t matter if the bus is moving or stopped at a light.