Update: Oreo, Dog Thrown Off Building, Was Euthanized
People Wait For Tomorrow's UWS Apple Store Opening
Emily and Sarah Kunstler, Filmmakers
Cheap Chicken Wing Deal Ruined by Gunslinging Teens
FIT Students Busted For Drug Dealing Get Probation
Yesterday, the Daily News broke the story about a sanitation worker who made a mess in order to fine establishments in Bensonhurst. You can see the video here but here is WNBC 4's description:
In the video, a man dressed like a sanitation supervisor gets out of the car, walks over to one of the beams supporting the elevated subway tracks and from a space in the beam removes two long and two short fluorescent bulbs and tosses them in the street.Little did the sanitation agent realize that H.K. Tea and Sushi had a surveillance camera capturing every move! And, as you would imagine, now other store owners are saying they were fined by the very same agent for the same offense, making the agents' work questionable.A few minutes later, a street sweeper cleans up the mess and about an hour later someone from sanitation gives out $100 [?] tickets to three businesses at that location, accusing them improperly disposing of those bulbs.
City Councilman William Colton is livid, saying, "This is absolutely outrageous. These are hardworking store owners being hit with $300 fines," and blaming ticket quotas for ticket blitzes. H.K. Tea and Sushi owner Allan Sy said, "It's like crazy. You can't believe like this happening in our city," while neighboring store owner Martin Zalta said, "I believe they wrote me tickets because they always do that, but I couldn't believe the tape. It was something to behold." The Department of Sanitation says it is investigating.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
This ranks up there with the yellow painted curbs at fire hydrants. In case you didn't know, an incorrectly painted curb is not a valid legal defense in New York and most curbs are painted incorrectly. So if the law says you need to park 15 feet from a hydrant and the curb is painted to 13 feet, parking a foot outside the line will get you an incontestable ticket.
If you think George Bush is violating your rights, go to traffic court and their appeals court.
1. Get rid of ticket quotas
2. Fire the team of MBAs we paid hundreds of thousands to come up with a plan for how to cut management costs and increase revenue from fines
3. Hire effective managers for city workers
I want a consultants fee for the work above...
Here's your fee:
........................./´¯/)
......................,/¯..//
...................../..../ /
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`•¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´(..´......,~/'...')
.........\.................\/..../
..........''...\.......... _.•´
............\..............(
..............\.............\
Wow, a color surveillance camera. and, he had an IR unit for low light. Score another one for the good guys.
Remember the last time a private camera caught a cop taking a leak in Little Italy? He had an IR unit, too.
If the NYPD had it's way, they would love to do away with private cams and install their own.
Eyes are everywhere.
miquel, we'd all like fees for stating the obvious on the internet.
now, i believe you owe me $20 for telling you that.
I bet H.K. Tea and Sushi is going to have random tickets coming their way for years now...after that camera gets mysteriously vandalized.
*after that camera gets mysteriously vandalized.*
if i was H.K.Tea and Sushi I would install more hidden micro cams for that very reason.
It's not even just happening in brooklyn it's happening all over. In Queens, where I am my neighbors around our block and aound the corner got fined weekly at one pt which i find odd because i live on a very clean street wehre everyone sweeps every evening and morning. The sanitation workers sometime go through your garbage and opening them and leaving a mess.. found them doing that one day and argued so she went away but ticketing us first but we all fought and won.. also if you get tickets please make copies I noticed after the 3rd time it was the same sanitation officer.. so obviously something fishy is going on..defintely has to do wiht qoutas. Its like we have to freaking watch our front lawns 24/7- some of us do have jobs.. i guess we should all install cameras.. these ppl are all crooked because one time i went to fight a ticket there were more santiation ticket ppl then parking ppl.. and most were ticketed three to four times in a row. Maybe some do have a dirty front lawn but the sense of somthieng not right was felt there.
Just install the cams inside the restaurant.
A & E's "it takes a thief" show had a skateboard shop with cams inside.
I bet the sushi place just had the dept of health over to do a "surprise" inspection.
Hey, #1 - Yellow curbs have no legal meaning in NYC. Chances are a civilian painted it, not the city. The only way you can be safe is by learning the parking rules (which most people do by trial and error.)
I LOVE this story, BTW!
So is it sani police that run around putting those "This Car Violates Street Cleaning Rules" stickers on cars? I've thought that practice is something that Bloomberg could be shamed into getting rid of. After all, it is pointless and mean - a $70 ticket from the brownie is enough, we don't need to employ an additional person to vandalize the car.
bird, that's awesome!
Bird has way too much free time on his hands.
About a year ago, this fat DOS bitch squeezed her fat ass out of her car and then walked up and down the street looking for reasons to give the houses on the street tickets. She gave our next door neighbor a $150 ticket because there was a napkin between a car and the curb (in the street), which is technically a homeowner's responsibility. She then gave my landlady a ticket for $100 because the boxes for recycling weren't tied tight enough, and they were only tied once around one direction.
I understand giving tickets to homeowners who do not take care of the property in front of their houses at all (such as never shoveling snow or just dumping garbage that's poorrly bagged, etc.), but this was so blatantly a quota issue. She was so fat and gross too, that she should have given herself a ticket for violating public standards of decency.
Fuck the DOS!
if these tickets were given out on subways they would make a mint
"if these tickets were given out on subways they would make a mint"
...They do. My friend got a $50 fine for having his bag on the seat next to him in an empty train. Again, I'm for cracking down on feet on seats and whatnot during rush hour, but it's getting so officers hands are tied to use any judgement other than how many tx they have left to write.
Miguel -
You should change that last statement to "lazy piece of shit officers' hands are tied...". Cops who do their job well and really patrol would have no trouble locating real violators of the law. But, most are such lazy sacks of shit that they ticket the first few violators they see and then spend the rest of the day jerking off.
the magic of copy and paste.
dude, you're hilarious. Thanks for the laughs
I got a bunch of tickets in a row when I was away. I was fuming mad. So ask your sanitation goon when he/she checks the street you live on. Each street has its own schedule and they are obligated by law to tell you when they will be appearing, to give you a chance to clean up.
My sanitation worker told me he comes over between 8 am and 9 am every day, I just check the street at 7:30 on my way out the door to work; the chance of trash being dropped in the next half hour to an hour is so small that if I did get a ticket, I'd definitely consider it fishy.
I haven't gotten any tickets since.
Why is everybody bitching ,and complaining about these practices by the city ? You all know about the quota system they have in place . Every year at specific times the police go on there tresure hunt for gold . People get bullshit tickets for the dumbest things, If this happens to you do what I did and just take it to court during your day off . Believe me if you do it right and sue both parties here . You won't have anymore problems with phony tickets . Case inpoint, A cop gave me a ticket for "Blocking the box" . The problem was I wasn't purposly blocking the driver ahead of me decided to make a U-turn in the middle of the intersection . The cop decided to give me the ticket when his car was the one blocking the box ! I took a picture of his car and mine in one frame and took the evidence with me to court . Suffice to say as soon as the judge saw this she dismissed the charges, and expunged my record . I then got this officers name and badge number and sued his stupid-ass for Harrassment, Defaming me, etc. . He was surprised that I wented that far and pleaded guilty . The system works , You just have to put in the footwork !
this country sux