Interesting read from TA: Behind the Blue Wall with Officer X

This is one of those things that gets my blood boiling to the point where I have so much to say I don't know where to start. If you're a cyclist in NYC it's a must read. Esp to those of you who've received tickets in the past..

Luckily for you, thinking of where to start made me recall an incident I experienced a while back that go along these lines..

Something like 10 something years ago I had my car parked over on 9th ave. I had to go into my office for something real quick on my day off. Parking in midtown is a total nightmare and it costs like $12 to park for 30 min at a local garage. 10 ave however had metered parking at the time for 1 hour for a couple of bucks. More than enough time for me to make the trip over to 6th ave and back. I brought my skateboard just to make sure and get a little rad along the way..

Just under an hour later I returned to see a couple of cops doling out tickets on the avenue where I was parked. Keep in mind this is before the days of those super fast ticket printers they have now. Every parking ticket had to be written by hand, which took time. The ticket he was writing was for the very last car on the corner. My car was parked about 5 cars back and there was a ticket on each cars window. At first I was nervous, wondering if I was too late but according to my time, I was good to go. Sure enough I check my car and there was a fucking ticket on the window. I was shocked wondering how I could possibly mess something as simple as that up. Only to be even more shocked that there was still a minute left on my meter!

Now, like I said, my car was about in the middle of the block and the officer in question was writing a ticket for the car on the corner about 5 cars ahead of mine. So let's say it takes what, 2-3 min to write one ticket? Which means when he wrote the ticket for my car, it had at least another 10 minutes left on it before he managed to get to the end of the block where I first saw him..

Upon realizing this, I ran right up to him (still writing the ticket on the corner car) and was like: 'Excuse me, I still have time on my meter- why did you give me a ticket?!' Apparently he didn't like some random kid questioning his authority and without even looking at me, essentially told me to piss off. To which I got REALLY fucking pissed off and yelled: What the fuck is wrong with you?! I still have a minute left and you wrote all these other people tickets too! I probably had another 10-15 minutes left when you wrote my ticket!!

Now you might be thinking, wow, smooth move not only yelling at a cop but calling him out on his job. Well, the kicker is that there was a crowd of people around him on the corner, all of which were gawking since that's what New Yorkers do best when they're not stepping over or walking by dead bodies on their way to work in the morning. So not only was I questioning his judgement but I was doing so in front of a bunch of people, further embarrassing him. At this point he got really, really pissed off and screamed:

YOU'LL GET A TICKET WHEN I SAY YOU GET A TICKET!!

He basically admitted to his wrong doing which was somewhat gratifying to hear despite the fact that  he was a fucking asshole for giving me a BS ticket. At that point, I saw no further reason to keep antagonizing him so I turned around and got in my car. As I drove by I screamed: KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK ASSHOLE out my window. He said something in return but it was muffled by the sound my tires screeching on the hot asphalt..

In hindsight, I'm actually glad he wrote me that ticket. Had he not, I wouldn't have that interesting little anecdote to pull out of my hat now and then whenever people talk about how annoying cops are with their BS ticket collecting..

Also, I'm not trying to say that ALL cops are assholes or anything. Just most of them :-) 

THE END!

Interesting read from TA: Behind the Blue Wall with Officer X