July 7, 2008
3-Year-Old's Love of Leaves Gets Her Ticketed
What happens when a three-year-old plucks some leaves from a tree branch? Well, if a Parks Department employee is watching, the child's mom gets a summons.
WABC 7 reported on this act of arboreal malfeasance: Apparently little Ana Stinner--who "can barely reach even the lowest branch on the tree in question"--grabbed some leaves while playing in Chelsea Waterside Park. Her mother Elaine Stinner says the leaves were from a twig, but a parks officer disagreed and wrote that the 35-pound tot "severed a branch."
Elaine says she told the parks officer she didn't see Ana do it, but he apparently wasn't taking any excuses.The Parks Department has now told WABC 7's Eyewitness News "the summons was issued improperly. We are in the process of voiding the summons and speaking with the officer who issued the summons. The mother should have been given a warning.""He told me that if my daughter had committed a murder while I wasn't watching, I'd still be responsible," Elaine said. "She's 3, so I really didn't know how to respond to that."
Maybe Ana can find 7-year-old Nathalie Shea of stoop chalkitti fame and they can form a support group.
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re-fucking-diculous
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yeah that's how govt should run: ticket first, ask questions never
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Throw her in jail. If we don't get this blatant crime off the streets, it will destroy our city.
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In Chelsea that $100 fine would take two weeks allowance to pay off.
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i hope it was from one of the cops that just graduated
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I wish they were as thorough with:
- dog poop
- loud motorcycles at night
- the f**cking ice-cream truck
- my neighbor with the speakers blasting music to the OUTSIDE of his apt.
- etc.
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The PEP - Park Enforcement Police - are quasi fascists. Nothing new. They hassle everyone.
Even 3-year olds.
These PEPs are truly pathetic. Now even more folk know how terrible they are.
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Well I guess you get to squeeze ever nickel and dime from NYCers in this day and age. If they start ticketing for J walking we are going to have a problem
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it's Giulliani time
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I'm all for ticketing parents who don't watch their kids. If these guys could come to my supermarket and ticket the idiots who let their little rugrats run around while they yap on their cell phones, that would be awesome.
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This is laughable. Parks police are pathetic. I feel kind of bad for them. They have inferiority complexes because they're no real cops, so they bust people for inane thing like this. That is very sad.
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perhaps the PEP should be focusing on the trash issue around the hudson river.
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Waahhhh! The ice cream truck pisses me off... Waaahhh!!!
GET A LIFE!
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I feel safer already knowing the leave bandit is behind bars.
Seriously, the NYPD needs to go back busting hipster street artists, Critical Mass and No Pants instead of wasting resources on these petty crimes.
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as absurd as this is (and this is really, really ridiculous), it does bring up the point of parents watching their kids. new york city parents tend to believe their children to be invincible to rules (whether legal or societal). kids run amuck, knocking into people, breaking things all the time. my point is that while this was really silly, there are so many instances when parents should be ticketed for their kids behavior. the kids who's parents let them run around doing what they want are the same assholes who spend their thirties drinking 40s on somebody else's stoop.
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Hey, I saw kids pulling entire branches down during the blossoming season in Central Park, totally feeling like they had the right. They SHOULD get a summons. I totally called the little brat on it.
They need to learn respect for their surroundings.
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i hope this pseudo-pig breeds. the world needs more people who act like nazis to three-year-olds.
wtf
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what dickless dicks.
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(small branches, okay, let's say "boughs" then, but still, quite flagrant disregard for the trees and park.)
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Hey, when Mister Softee parks under your window for 45 minutes it's reasonable to be annoyed. The city's noise code addresses ice cream trucks -- they're not allowed to play their music while standing still, only while moving.
My two-year-old sometimes pulls leaves off trees in Central Park ($100). He even throws them in the lake on occasion ($150). He has removed sand from a sandbox ($75), accidentally peed on the ground ($125) and dropped a pretzel on the ground that was then eaten by a pigeon ($50). He's a one-man crime wave!
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And they parks dept should also get on the asses of the idiots who leave all their garbage on the Great Lawn when they get up from their little picnics. It's shocking how much litter you'll find there at the end of the day.
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The PEP are bullies, true. On the other hand, though, a lot of city parents do look the other way when their kids are busy trampling the foliage and damaging public property. If the kid really was damaging the tree, the ticket was entirely appropriate--is Mommy going to replace or pay to restore that tree? And why wasn't she watching her 3-year-old well enough to prevent her from damaging anything?
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The Great Lawn is played out. North Meadow is where it's at. Nicest part of the park.
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Ha ha. Stop abusing trees, you little troll.
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amazing, there's more sympathy for the mauling pitbulls than for a little girl.
thankfully anti-freeze is cheap.
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If an action is against the law, then there should be a penalty for breaking it. If the law is outmoded, then get rid of it.
That being said, Momma should have been watching her kid. Lots of kids have destructive natures and will tear things up if allowed to do so. Children should learn that everything they touch is not theirs to tear up.
signed,
The Lorax
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i blame the violence in the media.
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1- Pulling a few leaves and even branches off of a tree isn't going to hurt it. And the amount of leaves / branches a 3 YEAR OLD GIRL can pull off a tree certainly will not hurt it.
2- If my kid was picking some leaves off a tree, I wouldn't even think twice about it. It's not the fact that I'm a bad parent or inattentive, it's the simple fact that what he/she is doing is completely harmless.
3- Who even knew there was a law against leaf picking in the first place?
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They should re-assign the PEP's to the parks listed in the Post article to ticket the squatters, ho's, junkies, and car thieves.
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pretty sure they could have given the mother and the daughter a warning and that would have been that. that probably would have shocked the daughter enough to never do it again, pointed the behavior out to the mother and not made the city employees look so badly.
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i'm with the cop on this one.
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It's also a against the law to climb trees in the parks. I've seen parents get ticketed for letting their kids climb in Central Park.
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The government is getting us used to a more dominant role in our lives. They want kids to have less free time to daydream and play. Train them early to be robots and take orders. More and more antiquated quality of life rules are being dug up and enforced from the depths of the law books. The city will do anything make more money. It's Orwelian.
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I blame GTA IV.
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At least the Parks Dept has admitted there was a mistake and is going about fixing it.
If only the NYPD could get their minority of thugs under control (like this one) and the majority of good officers to stand up to them, we might be onto something.
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Headzo, leaves perform photosynthesis, which feeds the tree. Not to mention that the leaves nourish various species of helpful insects. The leaves also end up as litter and debris, which can be a public health hazard (if they're wet, people can slip on them); can attract pests, and in the end, create more work because someone else has to come along and clean them up.
Damaging trees = destroying public property. If you don't teach your kid to respect foliage and to respect other people's property--yes, you are a bad parent.
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So what can you do in this city without getting fined? How much damage can an unsupervised three year cause? Why not warn the parent before writing a summons? It is just like the traffic cops-they don't want to hear shit as they write tickets... Every day this city stoops lower and lower.
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roe-
Thank you for this enlightening lesson. I had no idea. I thought trees lived off of lollipop skies and cotton candy dreams.
If this kid had a chain saw and was systematically decapitating this tree of all its limbs I would agree with you.
People seem to be forgetting that this is a 3 year old! What damage could they possibly do? Seriously!
If a little kid came prancing up to my tree and picked off a few leaves I say have fun.
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I heard that after she destroyed those leaves, she walked out to the street and urinated on someone's Prius.
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Assuming the 3 year old even did the crime...
I'm betting that Parks officer is reassigned.
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Leaves on the ground are "litter" or "debris" and can be a public health hazard? You've got to be fucking kidding me. Holy shit. And is the tree going to starve is a few leaves are gone? A tree in the park has thousands and thousands of leaves -- it won't miss a few. Yes, you should definitely teach your kid not to destroy public property and to respect trees, but no matter what you do or what you tell them unless you're 6 inches away from them all the time a 3-year-old will sometimes pull a few leaves off a tree here and there. And guess what? Nature doesn't care. That's why trees have lots of leaves, to feed the tree, feed the pests, and to fall off and make busy-work for welfare recipients stuck on Parks Department chain gangs.
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maybe instead of ripping leaves off trees the little girl should have ripped the flesh off an elderly man.
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kid probably got desensitized to plant violence by playing GTAIV. I know I did when I played the tree killing mission.
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I have fond childhood memories of walking with my mother to look for the prettiest leaves we could find. We'd bring them home and make art with them (add paper and Elmer's glue). However, we never picked them off trees - we always looked for what had already fallen to the ground. If everybody let their kid pull leaves off trees, the trees would indeed suffer. In city parks, you are only allowed to harvest branches, pine needles, etc. that have already fallen.
However, as someone who has foraged in city parks for wild herbs, greens, and medicinal weeds, I know that even the weeds that will be pulled up are protected (such as dandelion). Urban weed pickers tend to be very respectful of the plants and will hide from rangers to do it. It would be impossible to stop all the people who gather mulberries, chickweed, mushrooms, gingko nuts, and other goodies from Central Park and other city parks.
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C'mon, she's clearly throwing up gang signs in that pic. This is a sociopath in the making, get her in with Skoda for a session.
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Uh-oh, my two-year-old crime wave likes to pick those white puffy dandelion thingies and blow on them until the little fluffs come off and fly away. Is that OK or is he a criminal for prematurely doing what nature intended anyway?
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Now I understand.
The 3-year old girl should have branded herself with a pretentious title such as "Urban Weed Picker" then "respectfully" picked the leaf off the tree (maybe she could have asked for its permission?), and then hid from the evil ranger (apparently it's OK to pick plants as long as you don't let a ranger see you).
Does this pretty much sum it up, editrixie?
FYI- picking a leaf off the tree doesn't kill it. whatever the hell you pick in the woods "wild herbs, greens, medicinal weeds" DOES kill it - INSTANTLY. how is your method any better than picking a leaf?
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JenChungsBra, so if someone pulls a few shingles off the roof of your house, it's OK, right? Your roof certainly has enough shingles, a few missing won't hurt, and you shouldn't be angry if one or two are gone.
No, one kid who comes by and pulls off a leaf or two isn't going to kill the tree. But when you have a lot of parents with the mentality that it's harmless, after a while, there aren't going to be any leaves left and the tree will be damaged. Not to mention that everyone else misses out on the oxygen and shade that the tree would have provided.
Kids are naturally inquisitive, but that's why they have parents: to stop them from doing things they shouldn't do. They need to learn that it's not all about them, and they don't have carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want. Your kid wants to see the leaves? Fine. Pick up some that have already fallen, or pick up your kid for a closer look, but don't let her yank them off.
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Headzo--If you have a tree in your own yard, and you don't mind people pulling it apart, it's your decision. In a public park? It's not there to be damaged, it's not all about you, and if a ranger sees you or your child doing so, he or she has a right to stop and ticket you. I get tired of parents excusing their children's bad behavior with "they're only 3, what damage can they do?" You're not teaching them respect--that's the damage.
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so if someone pulls a few shingles off the roof of your house, it's OK, right? Your roof certainly has enough shingles, a few missing won't hurt, and you shouldn't be angry if one or two are gone.
That is so drastically far off the original thing it's not even apples and oranges. It's more like apples and pig's feet.
And... get back to me when the kid can pull the leaves off the top of the tree. You know, the ones that matter.
The fact this city has a law on the books that fine people who pick leaves off trees should be mind-boggling... but really it isn't.
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Just another reason not to raise a kid in the city. How many poor deprived city kids have never climbed a tree!!?