Streetsblog New York City

Via Gothamist, local blog This is FYF posts this scene from Houston Street earlier today. Apparently, with President Obama due in town for a speech at Cooper Union, NYPD jumped at the chance to drastically overreact by confiscating New Yorkers' personal property. We haven't been able to confirm with the public information office yet, but This is FYF says police cited "security concerns that bikes might be secret pipe bombs" as their excuse:

NYPD officers clipped the locks of hundreds of bikes along Houston Street this morning in preparation for President Obama's speech at Cooper Union. The bikes were unceremoniously put in the back of the truck.  There was no prior notification of the bikes needing to be cleared along the route by NYPD and onlookers were not given information as to what would become of the bikes.

NYPD's penchant for equating bikes and cycling with security threats is, historically speaking, a recent development. If they were doing this stuff forty years ago, Governor Rockefeller might never have made it to his Earth Day speech in Prospect Park.

While riding home from work on the morning of March 22, Rodney Seymour was doored by a truck driver. When the police responded to his 911 call, instead of ticketing the doorer, they hit Seymour with two summonses for improperly equipping his bike. 

Seymour says he was biking safely, heading home from work in the direction of traffic and wearing an orange reflective vest and helmet. After crossing 10th Street on Third Avenue, heading north, he got doored by a box truck driver, falling onto his shoulder and head. "I was in a little pain and the truck driver suggested I call the cops," said Seymour. "He was very cooperative."

A fire truck and ambulance arrived first. The EMTs took Seymour's vitals, gave him an ice pack and suggested he wait for the police to arrive so he could make a report. An accident report is necessary in order to get the doorer to pay a victim's medical bills under New York's no-fault law, said Mark Taylor, Seymour's attorney.  

When an officer from the Ninth Precinct arrived on the scene, Seymour found him more interested in avoiding paperwork than helping an injured cyclist. "He got very upset because I was insisting on having a police report," said Seymour. He recalled the officer yelling, "You want a report? You want a report? I'll give you a report!" (The Ninth Precinct has not returned Streetsblog's requests for comment.)

The officer then walked back to his vehicle, Seymour said, returning ten minutes later with the report in hand. But that wasn't all. He'd also brought over two summonses.

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Thanks to tipster ddartley for the latest chapter in NYPD's ongoing mistreatment of bus riders on 34th Street. Yesterday, eight cruisers from northern Queens (precincts 110, 111, 112, 114 and 115) sat parked in the bus lane between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. During evening rush hour. You know, we're starting to think there may be a pattern here.

This time, the police stepped up their game, blocking the bus stop itself and forcing elderly passengers to disembark in the middle of the street. Since shame can't keep police from inconveniencing bus passengers, maybe a physically separated busway on 34th will do the trick.

More pics after the jump.

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Peter Moskos is a former Baltimore police officer and an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. A version of this essay also appeared on his blog, Cop in the Hood, and in the West Side Spirit.

Karen Schmeer, a friend of a dear friend, was killed on January 29 while carrying groceries home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She was killed by a speeding car filled with drug-shoplifting hoodlums fleeing the police. The impact knocked her out of her boots and flung her through the air, half a city block.

Let me be clear: the police did not kill Karen Schmeer. Criminals did. Let them rot. But their guilt does not absolve the police of responsibility.

Karen’s death is more than a simple tragedy. Karen wasn’t just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Karen might be alive if police did not bend or break the exact rules put in place to prevent this kind of senseless death.

Let me be clear: the police did not kill Karen Schmeer. Criminals did. Let them rot. But their guilt does not absolve the police of responsibility.

While it is the job of police to catch crooks, it’s not always their job to chase crooks. Not in cars. Cars are dangerous.

Police say they weren’t in pursuit at the time of the crash, but witnesses, according to the Daily News, “saw the car weaving in and out of traffic going north on Broadway with a squad car with lights and sirens blaring in hot pursuit.” Why the discrepancy? Because police should never be chasing suspects up Broadway at 8 p.m.

You don't need to pull the trigger to be guilty of murder. You don’t have to want to kill somebody. You do need to accept the likely consequences of your actions. This is what moral responsibility is about.

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When Jeff Geisinger biked through a red light on Atlantic Avenue last October, he knew that he might get a traffic ticket. So when a cop pulled him over, he wasn't surprised. He just didn't expect to be handed a summons for disorderly conduct, a criminal violation.

What Geisinger did wasn't legal and it wasn't the safest technique. Shortly after midnight on a Tuesday, he ran a red while biking north on Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn, at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue. "There was a stopped car to the right of me on Atlantic waiting to turn north," he said. "As the light turned red and I dashed through the intersection, the car slowly started to turn and I cut in front of it, with enough distance between the two of us for me to pass by safely." An officer saw the maneuver and pulled him over.

It's hard to imagine that what happened next would have happened to a motorist who did the same thing. Rather than write a traffic ticket, the officer issued Geisinger a summons for disorderly conduct.

While moving violations are non-criminal offenses, disorderly conduct is part of New York's penal code and carries a fine of up to $250 and up to 15 days in prison. It's something of a catch-all charge, probably by design, that can theoretically be invoked for "threatening behavior," making "unreasonable noise," using "abusive language" in public, or obstructing traffic, among other things.

Geisinger says that he didn't give the officer a hard time or make a scene, making much of the statute inapplicable to his situation, but not necessarily all of it. (The 77th Precinct has not returned Streetsblog's requests for comment.)

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The debut Streetfilms Shortie caught an errant scooter blocking a bike lane. This time it's New York's Finest, camped out in the Manhattan Bridge bike path at Canal and Chrystie.

A half-step forward, two steps back.

May's Bike Month Critical Mass reportedly drew more participants than usual, and NYPD responded by handing out a passel of trumped-up summonses. No surprise there, but as this video (from glassbeadian via Gothamist) shows, officers on scooters went so far as to follow riders down the Hudson River Greenway.

Barbara Ross of Time's Up thinks police may have been acting in retaliation to recent movement on the long-standing Five Borough Bike Club lawsuit to overturn the parade permit requirement for bike rides of 50 or more cyclists. Check the Gothamist post for another vid that features scooter cops picking out which cyclists to harass.

The NYPD continues to dispute eyewitness accounts of the events that preceded the vehicle-on-pedestrian collision that took the life of Violetta Kryzak, a 38-year-old mother and Greenpoint resident.

Despite the statements of three separate eyewitnesses stationed several blocks from one another who claim that at least one police vehicle was following the speeding white mini-van that struck and killed Kryzak, the 94th Precinct’s commanding officer maintains that a police pursuit did not occur.

At a precinct community council meeting last week, Deputy Inspector Dennis Fulton said that he can only go on what witnesses say, but that he has "no indication that [a police-pursuit] happened."

Streetsblog contacted the NYPD's Public Information Office for clarification about the contradiction between eyewitness accounts of the day’s events and Deputy Inspector Fulton’s understanding of what occurred. "Everybody’s going to say something," said a spokesperson.

The family of Violetta Kryzak has secured legal representation. A private investigator hired by the family’s lawyers is conducting interviews and searching for surveillance cameras that may have caught the alleged chase on tape.

The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau also has an investigation underway, said Fulton.

"Have placard-bearing drivers begun their own reclaiming of reclaimed public space?"

That is the question posed by Streetsblogger ddartley, who last week snapped these photos of a city government vehicle parked in the new Madison Square pedestrian plaza. He got just close enough to spot the placard behind the windshield when:

This guy wearing some sort of NYPD uniform showed up and got in and drove off. Okay, it's not like he was committing murder or anything, but every time a cop breaks a law for all to see, it's just a little more poison in the world. This suggests that even after these fancy new pedestrian-only plazas have been built, they are under threat from being parked on by placard-bearing NYC employees who remain, at least as far as parking, 100% completely above the law. Well, for now!

It's surprising, really, that it's taken this long for such behavior to come to light. What can, or what should, DOT do to nip it in the bud?