Long story short– guy tries to skip paying for the train, is in the process of being detained by two cops. An undercover officer rushes in, mistakes one of the cops for the perp, and punts him in the head. Once he realizes what he has done, he assists the cop he has kicked and then punches the perp in the face as he is lying defenseless on his stomache.
Some thoughts:
1.) How much are subway fares in New York that it is considered a useful allocation of resources to have fifteen cops arrest one fair jumper.
2.) Why don’t we know this officer’s name?
3.) How bad is the training that a cop’s first instinct is to rush in and kick someone in the head? And to not only rush in, but rush in so quickly that he can’t even figure out who he “should” be kicking.
Assholes. For a couple bucks in fare money, they now are going to have to spend thousands in taxpayer money dealing with this, and who knows how much they will pay out to the victim? From a purely financial standpoint, I don’t know how all these shitty cops are tenable. Being a bad cop just costs too much taxpayer money. You would think that would be incentive enough to make change happen. But, since this is America, there is always enough money to kick someone in the head or bomb someone, but never enough to feed the homeless or deal with the mentally ill or build something like a bridge.
Amir Khalid
It does seem that in America the playground bullies all grow up to become policemen, or to take up policeman-type work.
Cluttered Mind
There’s enough money to stop people from feeding the homeless! Maybe this time they can finally put this menace away for good.
kindness
At least they didn’t shoot him.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, obviously the guy needs to be promoted, preferably to some position where he’ll be kicking people in the head full time. He’s shown some aptitude, after all.
Security detail for the USSC, perhaps? Need to deal with the damn proles.
charluckles
The last paragraph is the part where I completely lose the thread when it comes to the “law and order; if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear; he got what he deserved” explanation/excuse for these incidences. Who do you think ends up footing the bill when the tab comes due at the end of the inevitable lawsuit, regardless of the outcome of that lawsuit?
300baud
This is not to justify all the bullshit, but paying fares is one of those things that most people will do if they see it as fair, so I don’t think the first question is the right one. It’s not the cost of the single fare, it’s the cost of ending up with a system where a lot of people aren’t inclined to pay. Tax enforcement is a similar deal. Contrast the American atttitude toward paying taxes (necessary evil) vs the Italian attitude (only stupid people pay): http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/world/europe/02italy.html
Cacti
Joe Arpaio and his thug sheriff’s department has cost Maricopa County AZ at least 40 million dollars in lawsuit settlements.
But the local yokels don’t care because “Shurf Joe” is “tough on crime” (i.e. tough on brown people).
flukebucket
@kindness: Amen. The guy is alive. He can count his blessings. Have not watched the clip but was the guy black or white? I assume he was white since he was not shot but I could be wrong.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
Nail. Hammer. Hit. Squarely and with obvious accuracy.
As they say in the Field Artillery, you may now fire for effect.
kc
Classic. A bunch of beefy cops piled on top of one guy, yelling “Stop resisting” for the bystanders.
Fuck the police.
kc
@flukebucket:
The dangerous turnstile jumper? He’s a black guy.
I guess we should be glad they didn’t shoot him 47 times.
Cacti
@Amir Khalid:
It’s even worse than you think.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has held that Police Departments can pass on otherwise qualified candidates who are “too smart”. The New London, CT police department passed on an applicant for scoring too high above average on the Wonderlic Personnel Test. He sued and lost, then appealed and lost.
Belafon
@300baud: I’m not against some type of punishment for not paying a fare, but the point is that people like this cop, who rush in thinking they’ve got to rough someone – anyone – up, ought to be removed from the force for costing so much.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Who generally takes those jobs in Malaysia?
aimai
@300baud: They really could pay more people and design better fare systems if the principal issue was preventing the odd fare beater. Most people will continue to pay their fares even if they see one person getting away with it. Really they will. The degradation of the public spaces that comes from seeing people punched and kicked by law enforcement has a separate cost that is much higher than any knock on reward in preventing fare beating.
flukebucket
@kc: Well, I am sure they did fear for their lives and he probably reached for their guns.
aimai
I’ve been rewatching the wire (#stuffwhitepeoplelike) and am amazed all over again at how often the police are shown just mobbing individual black people and taking them down physically. I mean–I saw it years ago but I didn’t really “see” it, or understand it, until recently as Ferguson and all the other police provocations have become so inescapable.
kc
Do all cops do steroids? Because that’s the impression they give.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: Those kind of costs somehow elude the decision makers who are fully in the might makes right mode, no matter how expensive it winds up being.
I am thinking that jail time for the cop and for his immediate supervisor would go a long way toward correcting such overenthusiasm in using brute force as a default as opposed to a more professional “peace officer” approach.
Of course, the Police Union would scream bloody murder if something like that happened. What’s good for the goose IS NOT good for the gander, as far as they’re concerned.
boatboy_srq
@Cacti: It’s 2014 and “dumb enough to be a policeman” is now a thing.
boatboy_srq
@aimai: Exactly. How much ridership will they lose if people think the odds of being randomly assaulted by LOEs is too high to risk the ride? I’m tempted to place this into the “feature-not-bug” bucket, because all those riders will either be taking their cars to work (and needing all the auto infrastructure that goes with hypergridlock) or be without said jobs (Social Darwinism / Freedumb!).
Han
Hey, you can’t put a price on Authoritah.
RareSanity
I think I see your problem…
When have police departments EVER cared, or been held accountable for how they spend taxpayer money? All they do is hide behind “public safety”, paint anyone that dares challenge them as being against fighting crime, and for criminals…or drugs, or not wanting to protect children…and that’s it.
It’s the whole 9/11 and you’re “unpatriotic” if you don’t let the government do anything it wants all over again. Just on the local level.
scav
So the Police Union won’t even go on record as being against a permissive culture of cop on cop violence. So long as at least one of the heads kicked is worthy of a tufffoncrime soundbite, it’s all good.
p.a.
Don’t assume the poor schmuck is going to see any cash, either. Cities don’t give money away without a fight.
300baud
@aimai:
I agree. Which is why I started my comment with, “This is not to justify all the bullshit”. I think the dichotomy you create is false. It turns out other cities manage to police fares without beating people. Let alone without a Keystone Cops routine.
ReformedPantySniffer
FYI:
Subway fare in NYC is currently $2.75 if you buy a single-ride only, or $2.50 with various discounts if you buy the refillable Metro card. See “http://web.mta.info/metrocard/mcgtreng.htm”.
That said, NYC cops are notorious for liking to physically hit/verbally abuse people. This guy will probably get a check from the city at some point.
scav
@RareSanity: Don’t forget PDs are now going for self-funding, bring on the asset forfeiture and the wish lists!
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s why I’ve never been able to accept the premise of police misconduct being “just a few bad apples”. I’ve yet to meet a cop who wasn’t willing to tolerate a baseline level of corruption from their brothers in blue. And the larger the department, the lower the bar seems to go for acceptable misconduct.
David Hunt
If this guy wants to sue the police I hope he gets a good lawyer that warns him that his family probably can’t afford for lose him after he’s shot and killed by police after pulling a gun on a cop at a traffic stop.
See? No money paid out for a lawsuit!
burnspbesq
The NYPD has a strong union. Getting rid of a bad cop is a time-consuming and expensive exercise.
Choose your poison, Cole.
RareSanity
@scav:
That’s true…
Budgets getting reduced because of less tax revenue? Housing crisis, schmousing crisis…
Never fear, just start pulling random people over and taking whatever cash they have on them, for whatever reason suits your fancy!
Amir Khalid
@300baud:
No one here is defending the fare-dodger. The point is, there are ways to stop people like him without resorting to needless and misdirected violence. For some reason, the video at the link won’t play for me (maybe it doesn’t like foreigners) but the description seems horrific: a man wearing heavy work boots (presumably steel-toed) kicked a uniformed policeman in the head. I’m not familiar with the New York penal code, but that might count as assault with a deadly weapon even if you’re a cop yourself.
elmo
Cole, honey, where are you getting this adorable idea that police brutality costs a lot of taxpayer money? You mean in settlements and jury awards? You really think most of the people brutalized by the police ever see a dime of compensation?
It’s so cute, I just want to pinch your cheek swear to GOD.
Nicole
I have observed NYC cops ignoring fare jumpers who are white.
Mike in NC
I’d like to read about the ratio of police to civilians in this country compared to others. Also what the ratio was 20 years ago, 40 years ago, etc. We’re gradually becoming a police state. You can’t spit without hitting a cop, who of course will then arrest you for spitting in public.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
The problem, from the USSC point of view, at least, is that he might confuse one of the Justices for a perp and wind up booting him in the head or shooting him. The rest of the country might benefit if Scalia were booted in the head.
anotherMildred
In Germany, they use an honor system. Everybody just boards the subway/tram/whatever. On the other hand, if you get caught without a proper ticket or fare card you are *seriously* fined. System seems to work. Just sayin’. Nobody really messes with the Politzei, either, and it’s not those guys who patrol the transit….
Hal
Stopping toll jumpers was one of Giuliani’s proudest accomplishments as NYC Mayor, and was one of the primary reasons he was going to be the best President evah! At least according to Rudy.
kindness
I love the NY subway system. Happily pay every time no matter what stench meets me underground. Cheap. You can get anywhere in NYC for the exact same amount of money.
Out here in the Bay Area, one doesn’t jump the turnstile because you need that ticket to get out. If you don’t have it you get to pay max fare to leave which is like upstate NY State Thruway pricing if you go all the way to Buffalo.
Bill Arnold
@elmo:
NYPD misconduct case payouts seem to be about $100 million per year, according to
http://sttpml.org/nypd-cost-taxpayers-nearly-half-billion-in-the-last-five-years-from-civil-rights-violations/
Does anyone have another figure?
(I’ve seen larger numbers, like 800+M per year, that lump together all lawsuit payouts, not just NYPD.)
Amir Khalid
@Mike in NC:
But if you spit and hit a cop, don’t you get busted for assaulting a police officer?
schrodinger's cat
@anotherMildred: Works pretty much the same way in the local trains in Mumbai. Buy ticket, board the train, tickets are checked at random, if you are caught without a ticket then you pay a fine, which is several times more expensive than the ticket itself. Works pretty well.
CONGRATULATIONS!
That is not a concern of your betters, Mr. Cole. Spending our own money on the people who hold us down, kick us in the head, or shoot us just for lulz is one of the few diversions from the ever-rising column of cash that they’re willing to tolerate, as it keeps us far less likely to rebel out of justifiable fear for our lives.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hal:
The other reason, of course, being 9/11 something something.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
On the LRT here in KL, you pass through a turnstile with your token/prepaid card to get to the platform, and through another turnstile to get off the platform. Not enough room in a rush-hour crowd for ticket inspectors.
LanceThruster
Most likely the justification was he was breaking in a new pair of jackboots.
worn
@Cacti: Well the original idiom had as it’s meaning that a single bad apple will ruin the entire bunch. Somehow that seems to have morphed into exactly the opposite meaning, i.e., one can reasonably tolerate the existence of the bad ones because they are a minor percentage of the whole bunch. Slate blames the Osmonds.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
John;
I don’t even see how you can worry about this when some people on the internet still support the appointment of Loretta Lynch.
Somebody else on the internet said she isn’t PERFECT!
Arglebargle!
aimai
@300baud: Its not my dichotomy, its yours. I don’t see fare beating as much of a problem, actually. Its not really a slippery slope as you seemed to argue in your first post. Most people aren’t interested in cheating. And there are a number of ways, completely non violent, to discourage cheating: lowering the cost of the subway ride, making purchasing and upgrading stored fare cards simpler, making access to the subway without fare harder, employing more people in obvious capacities to check fares/passengers, and finally: ticketing people for riding without paying. None of those are violent or require assault on the part of the police.
gelfling545
@burnspbesq: I don’t know if it is a similar situation but after I retired I did some part time temp work for a lawyer who was atty for a couple of school districts. In one there was considerable turmoil over the fact that their efforts to terminate a few different teachers (who, if the facts were as stated, seriously should have been removed & how they got hired is a mystery) when it came out that the administrators had not followed the procedures, done the documentation, etc. & then, when the excrement hit the fan, wanted to terminate all in a rush. Lazy or lackadaisical administrators are responsible for keeping a fair number of unfit employees on the job. If the unseemly behavior has been tolerated (encouraged, even), terminating when the behavior gets publicized & there is an uproar is destined to fail expensively.
chopper
Hey, that $2.25 could buy two donuts. Think about it from the cop’s point of view.
Amir Khalid
@chopper:
And is there any estimate of how much revenue is lost to fare dodgers?
Debbie
@aimai:
Let’s not forget this is the city that criminalized squeegee men.
Ken
Well, they started out strong, with the proper invocations (“stop resisting! STOP RESISTING!”) to keep them from getting into any trouble. But their failure to use the appropriate follow up incantations (“Give me that cellphone, that’s evidence”) may wind up costing the city a few thousand dollars a few years down the road
CONGRATULATIONS!
@gelfling545: Firing anyone, union or no, is easy – IF you do your procedures and documentation right. Few do.
High administrator turnover is the cause for a lot of teacher dismissals that get bogged down for months if not years. And that turnover is a direct result of a shitty school board, usually either one that folds to every disgruntled parent in the district or one that is hellbent to privatize all schools.
Roger Moore
@gelfling545:
But somehow there’s rarely the same kind of feeding frenzy over the need to fire them that there is over the need to fire their subordinates. Funny how that works.
scav
@Amir Khalid: There’s always going to be wastage and a certain amt of crime / pilfering etc in any system. Stand on those honor system trams or busses (trains are harder to get off of) when the guards get on and it’s amazing watching the passengers disappear like solid light holograms (Prague was especially good at the magic). The thing is, one just juggles with the inconveniences and costs involved in the different enforcement systems (with declining rates of recovery), the negative impacts of the plans on the convenience and speed of travel (plus all the impacts on the physical infrastructure), figure out what you need to run the system, play with the price of the fare and hope it all works. Credit cards juggle with similar issues (US firms are a little behind the curve having held on too long to the comfortable cheaper existing system and underlying assumptions and not planning for the new bulk forms of pilfering.) But, if you’ve a culture with a thirst for jack-booted security and retribution theater, that is what you will get. Going to a honor-based composté-ticket system in the US would just get the jack booted cops roaming the trains instead of hanging out at the gates only.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
The question isn’t just how much is lost to fare dodgers, but how much would be lost to fare dodgers with different levels of enforcement. If they made no attempt to enforce payment, there would be enough scofflaws that the whole fare collection system would probably fail and hardly anyone would pay.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@scav: America; the ultimate one-sentence review.
Well done.
aimai
@Roger Moore: No: you could prevent fare beaters by changing the way people get into the subway. There don’t have to be systems which are completely porous to non-payers.
Roger Moore
@scav:
For what it’s worth, the Los Angeles MTA tried the honor system with its light rail system. There doesn’t seem to have been a big problem with jackbooted thugs on the trains, but there were apparently enough scofflaws that they’ve been slowly switching to turnstiles.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
I doubt the New York transit system has thought things out to the extent of asking which way of combating fare dodgers best reduces such losses. I was only wondering, does it have an idea how much it’s losing now?
Elizabelle
Meanwhile, in McLean, VA, high end NoVA neighborhood:
This one sounds juicy. And bloody.
scav
@Roger Moore: I don’t know, different police culture? (hard to imagine that lot missing a trick though.) Still, there are enough cultural difference between the individualistic don’t tax me bro, it’s all about me personally getting ahead ‘mercans and other (also imperfect) cultures that might induce hesitation about assuming the same rates of voluntary compliance in riders.
Roger Moore
@aimai:
The system doesn’t have to be totally porous to be pretty useless without enforcement. Most fare systems can be circumvented but generally aren’t because of a combination of socialization and fear of getting caught. If you remove the fear of getting caught, scofflaws will take advantage of the holes in the system, and watching them routinely get away with it will undermine others’ socialization to comply with the system.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Elizabelle: I know more attorneys than I’d like, and I gotta say, given…well, given how they are, it’s a wonderment to me that this sort of thing doesn’t happen a lot more.
It’s a high stress job with a massive price tag attached. Frequently a lot of social status involved as well. All of which are things that tend to send people over the edge when they lose their jobs.
Elizabelle
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Yeah, there will be a backstory on this one.
The suspects are 30 and 31.
Schlemazel
Have you guys discussed “pointergate”? Because the Minneapolis police are unhappy that the mayor is moving to have cameras installed on a small number of officers as a test they decided to smear her via a local knuckle dragging TV reporter.
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2014/11/pointergate_kstp_hodges_navell_kolls.php
on the face of it the whole thing is stupid but of course the reporter and the station (KSTP, wingnut central here in Minneapolis) is sticking by the story despite it being pointed out that the chief of police was at the photo op with the mayor and dozens of pictures of the mayor pointing just like that with many other white people.
Never want to piss off the cops I guess.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Indeed.
I can say, as a former military administrator (holding a commission gets you into this automatically) that documenting a subordinate’s malfeasance is tedious. It’s not fun. It’s sit down at your desk and write the subordinate up…document every fucking step of the way. Some of this can be delegated, but ultimately someone holding a commission has to make it happen.
30 60 90. Three months of this tedium. The idea being that the subordinate is put on written notice that their performance is not what is expected, and then following through when they don’t improve.
If they do you a tremendous favor and violate the UCMJ, that brings others into the process and speeds things along, gives it a sense of immediacy and urgency that the administrative process lacks. We’re talking the force of law here…not just bureaucratic bumbling.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Americans are simply not socialized the way Europeans are, and it shows in things like subway fare scofflaws. In Germany, it’s just not done. In the US, it’s “whatever you can get away with”.
We see that across socioeconomic boundaries, too. Wall Street is DOMINATED by “whatever you can get away with” as a working “philosophy”.
scav
ok, for weirdness, what if there was a carrot along with the boot? Every paid fare was also a lottery ticket or the like? Don’t know the laws involved but golly do ‘mercans love them there lotteries and manage to keep track of all the tickets. To counterbalence the problem of gaming addicts suddenly riding to all sorts of places they don’t need to go, there’d be the occasional heart-warming story of a red-line bum winning something.
Ruckus
I’ve recently ridden the LA Metrolink and you buy a ticket at a vending machine on the platform. At some stations no one checks but random checks may be performed underway by LASD who get paid by Metrolink to check fares/provide security. At other stations the sheriffs check everyone’s ticket as they get on the train. That is usually at an end of the line station. I could have ridden without a ticket for a number of stops but you never know. I don’t know what happens when the sheriff finds you ridding without a ticket but it for sure isn’t worth finding out.
mclaren
@Amir Khalid:
When I related that personal experience a couple of years ago (every single bully in my high school applied for and was accepted to the police academy in the city where I lived growing up), all of Balloon Juice exploded with outrage. “How dare you say that!” “You’re stereotyping all those fine officers!” “More bullshit from that asshole mclaren!” “I don’t believe it, we’re just hearing one side of the story.”
No, I was simply relating the plain facts. Every single bully in my high school went on to become a police officer. Every. Single. One.
All the kids who set cats on fire, all the kids who flushed M80s down toilets and blew up the plumbing, all the kids who dragged shrimpy guys into the bathroom and held their heads in a toilet…all those guys went on to become cops.
Not a polemic. Not an exaggeration. Just the facts.
2liberal
@Debbie: re: NYC Squeegee men:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeegee_man
i am not so sure i would want my car surrounded by these guys.
The Tragically Flip
Clearly the solution American legislatures will adopt for this problem is tort reform and Police immunity statutes. Somewhere in the wingnut welfare system a study of “frivolous” anti-police lawsuits is being polished, and a series of telegenic cops willing to appear in ads crying about how fear of lawsuits makes them hold back from stopping crime are being cast for ads and expert testimony.
brantl
They won’t have to pay out shit. That guy threatened them all with an invisible gun, first planting it in the hands of the guy that got kicked in the head, as a diversion. Can’t you see it there? The judge will.