thursday night summons

P and I went to the Shepard Fairey opening night party in DUMBO and got stopped by the police on our way home. P rode his bike to work (as he typically does in the summer), so had his bike to bring home after the show. We took the subway, since I didn't have a bike to ride home and riding on the handle bars didn't seem like a great idea in my 4 inch platform Michael Kors clogs. Anyways, we exited the G train at our stop. We walked up the flight of stairs and were heading towards the exit. We ran in to one of our tenants and began chatting with her. We were actually commenting how we like exiting at this particular end of the (very long) subway stop because there is a 24 hour attendant and often times a police officer (or two or three or four). We noticed there was a cop by the exit door, as usual. P was walking his bike next to him, then he sat on the seat and coasted along as we chatted.

When we were about 10 feet from the cop, he yelled out, "I can't believe what you're doing! I mean RIGHT in FRONT of me! I cannot believe this! I mean really! Are you REALLY doing this?!?!"

He scared the crap out of us, we had no idea what we'd done wrong.

Then he yelled again, "I cannot believe you are riding your bike in the subway, don't you know that's illegal?!"

Clearly we did not, as P got on his bike right in front of this man. P apologized, said he had no idea it was illegal. That he was on his way home with his wife, and he was very sorry. Of course he would never ride his bike on the subway if he'd known, especially right in front of a cop! We both apologized, P said he would never do it again, and we expected to receive a warning and then be sent on our way. Not with this man. He was WAITING for some poor souls like us to do something illegal. We just happened to be those suckers that night. So, our answers and reasoning did not suffice.

He took out his ticket book, but first said, "SIR do you have any warrants out on your name?!" "Because I'm going to call you in right now, and let me tell you, if there are any warrants out on you I will take you in immediately!!"

P said "No, no warrants."

While sweat dripped down his cheeks he said, "Are you sure?! Are you telling me the truth?! Because trust me, you do not want to lie to me. There will be BIG problems if you are lying to me!" "I will take you in tonight!"

Again, P said calmly, "No Officer, I do not have any outstanding warrants out on me. I'm a social worker, sir."

And let me just remind you. We did not look like hood rats this evening. I was wearing my cute 4" platforms, chic army pants and a cute tank top I recently purchased from Loehmanns. P had on his work attire which consists of dress pants and a dress shirt. Apparently we looked like MAJOR trouble makers. So the officer proceeded to call in a warrant check on P. Our tenant had left a while before as I looked at her and gave her that oh-my-god-i-can't-believe-this-is-happening look and said please go ahead.

So the cop calls in the check. "Yes 5770 on Bedford Nostrand, I have a warrant check, copy."

Of course the warrant check didn't take long because there WERE no warrants out on my dear husband.

He then proceeded to say/shout, "Look, I'm going to give you a summons and then tell you how to get out of it. You are lucky I'm not giving you a criminal summons because I could! And you'd better listen close, actually I'm going to tell her in case you aren't listening." And he looks at me.

He pulls out his pad, and it takes him about 3 minutes to flip through the code book to find whatever law it is we'd broken. Perhaps the 'do not coast on your bike in front of an angry rookie transit cop' law.

Anyways, he wrote it up and said, "Here is what you do. You mail in the summons and write a letter explaining why you should be pardoned. See the address is right here on the back."

He continued, "This is an old law... some guy was riding his bike like a maniac on the subway platform and hit an old lady and knocked her on to the tracks."

I really thought about pulling the cute girl/wife card and reasoning with this man, but I realized about 3 minutes in to his yelling and ranting, there was no point. He was out to get someone, and it happened to be us. So we took the summons, and wheeled the bike and our defeated butts on out of there (but of course not on the bike).

So here's what makes me the most angry about this situation:
1. The police officer immediately started yelling at us. Why? (rhetorical question here... i know this man has some issues)
2. We own a house around the corner. This is our neighborhood and my hard-earned tax dollars are going to pay this man's salary?
3. I guarantee you three drug dealers walked down the stairs past us to the platform while we got the summons. I mean, this guy really knew where to focus his efforts.
4. Apparently this has been discussed at our block association meetings, but why can't we get some regular cops around here? When I say regular I mean the same cops come back to the same posts. It's different cops every single night. If the cops really got to know who lived around here and who didn't, they wouldn't attack innocent locals.

Sheesh mageesh.