I have always admired NY police. When my 60s-era peers were shouting “Off the pig,” I was saying Thank you to the officers with whom I had encounters. One lovely transit policeman saved me from a potentially dangerous (and embarrassing) choice my 18-year-old brain let me make; another gave his own pocket cash to the daughter of a friend of mine, whose apartment had been robbed by thieves who emptied the child’s piggy bank. Living in NY as a young woman, then again as a middle-aged and an old one, I have never had disdain for my protectors, and I would support no legislation or mayoral proclamation that defunds them in any way. I have great respect for what they do, what they are. And gratitude.
Which makes me all the more resentful of the details in the story I am about to share.
Twice in the past week, I have been subjected to police actions that seem terribly disrespectful to the people who wear the uniforms and that simultaneously scam the citizens who depend on them.
The first incident was essentially a result of my own benign neglect. A frequent international traveler, I haven’t flown domestically in years. I did read somewhere about REAL ID, but I didn’t absorb it. I have a hologram on my driver’s license, and I figured that made it real enough. So, last week, as I prepared to fly to Iowa for a film festival, I opted to leave my passport at home; I figured my spiffy NY State Driver’s license would stand me in good stead.
How wrong I was.
At the gate, of course, the agent barred me from the entrance to the TSA/Gate portal. I felt stupid enough I didn’t cry or get angry, just asked if I should head back to Harlem to get my passport and reschedule my flight.
“Oh no,” replied the sweet young woman in her most authorial voice. “Go to that kiosk over there, and you can pay the fine.”
What followed was a process of attempts and failures to make the process simple, but in the end, my spending $60.00 was the antidote. My identification was not changed. No one asked me for further proof that I am not a robot. My cash was all they needed to authenticate that I am a Bonafide American and not a dangerous terrorist. The trained law enforcement people who would have arrested me had I tried to barrel my way forward stood helplessly by sweetly encouraging me to put money in the bloated kitty. Their time, their expertise, their intelligence squandered for sake of a collection plate.
Three days later, driving on Route 87 toward Manhattan from a medical appointment in Westchester, as I crossed the border into the Bronx, the traffic came to a dead halt. After a few minutes, the reason for the tie-up became clear. There were, at the side of the road, at least a hundred NY State and City policemen and women directing multitudes of cars off to a barricaded side of the road. Much to my consternation, three officers directed me to take my place behind a line of designated cars.
My mind was racing. What could this be? What could they be looking for? When I was 18, I couriered some weed from Long Island to Manhattan for my cousin , and that was absolutely the last time I had nay contraband on my person. Oh, I thought, I know. . . . A dangerous killer had recently escaped from a Tennessee prison; maybe they are stopping cars that look like mine . . . . Oh, wait, or maybe he’s got an old moll as his beard, and they’re looking for her. . . ?
Nope. Turned out, unbeknownst to me, a year or so ago, when I was switching insurance, there was a 20-day lapse in my coverage. No one told me. Geico never sent me a bill. They reported the lapse to the DMV. Then, rather than send me a notice ordering me to pay the penalty, the DMV opted instead to leave me in the dark.
Until the end of the month, when they could stop me and demand that I surrender my car.
The officer was neither harsh nor sympathetic at first. He simply said, “Your registration is suspended for 20 days.”
“Oh,” I said stupidly. “I guess it stays in its parking spot till the state clears me?”
“No, maam. We’ll be taking your car.”
“What? What do you mean? How will I get home ”
“Well, Maam, you will have to figure that out.”
I normally eschew crying as a reaction to what I deem injustice. But I was aware that cursing and unleashing my inner Rebecca Welton boss ass bitch might not be the smartest move. So I let the tears tumble forth.
“Please, sir,” I pleaded. “I need this car. I cannot get to my job without it, and I depend on my job to support myself. . . “
I could see he was reluctantly softening.
“I really can’t help that, Maam,” he said, this time more softly, almost apologetically. “I have to take your registration and your car.”
“You mean to tell me that you will put an 80-year-old woman out on the highway, where it is illegal to call an Uber, where there is no exit nearby, and expect . . . . “
Now the officer caught himself. I could see he did not want to be that guy. He completely rewound his demeanor and spent the next half hour helping my daughter figure out how to pay the fine online. Another policeman who was with him told me repeatedly that the helpful man was violating protocol; he implied that the helpfulness could get the officer in trouble. But in the end, thanks to the fact that he gave us a suspension number and a violation number, I was able to make the payment required online by way of my phone.
Once again, a simple payment and the sentence was commuted. That officer, probably a leader in his squad, a brilliant graduate of his academy, had officially wasted his time giving contraband information to an old woman, information the state should have sent to her so she could pay online. Elsewhere on the highway were real criminals, real speed monsters and intoxicated drivers not being caught. While an 80-year-old woman was detained for a pittance of a penalty. Such disrespect for the uniform.
Our administrators advocate barring the police from doing the work they are trained to do, but they make hundreds of them stand on the dangerous highway, breathing in fumes and abusing helpless idiots like me, directing them to make payments to the state, payments that will not increase their paychecks or improve their lives.
Your tax dollars at work!
