(Chris Goldberg)

Subway riders are free to leisurely lick their shoes or feed their families off high fructose corn syrup. But only the hardest, baddest, most ectothermic criminals put their feet up on another seat, and a recent report by the Times on seat-hogging arrests in 2011 proves yet again the NYPD is serious about enforcement. So serious, that in March a man was deported after showing an Ecuadorian ID to NYPD transit officers.

Though police gave fewer tickets for 1050.7(J) than in years past, more than 6,000 citations were given in 2011 for the offense, and around 1,600 of those came with an arrest. As one Brooklyn judge notes, many of these stops occur "late at night or early in the morning, when subways are generally at their least crowded," forcing the jurist to conclude that "there appears to be a disconnect between the code's goals and its enforcement."

That seems to be the case with William Peppers, a maintenance worker at a bakery who fell asleep around 4 a.m. on the way to work, and stretched out on the seat next to him. He awoke to a policeman tapping him, and spent 12 hours in jail. "I can see if it was rush hour," he says, "But there was no one else on the train. Why not just say, 'Put your feet down?' I lost a day of work because of their pettiness."

Why not? Because that would deny the officer an arrest. An officer speaking on the condition of anonymity tells the Times that there were plenty of "petty arrests" that occurred because of the pressure to "bring in one collar" every month. "Sure, it could be an empty train, but you stop them and if they don't have their ID, you have your collar."

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne insists that these "petty" arrests actually prevent crime, and take career criminals off the street:

“One of the reasons that crime on the subways has plummeted from almost 50 crimes a day in 1990 to only seven now is because the N.Y.P.D. enforces violations large and small, often encountering armed or wanted felons engaged in relatively minor offenses, like putting their feet up, smoking on a platform, walking or riding between cars, or fare beating,”

But they also robbed Flavio Uzhca of his existence in New York. Uzhca, a line cook at a Midtown restaurant, was asked for identification on a 7 train. When he produced an Ecuadorian ID, police detained him. Once authorities learned that an immigration judge had ordered his deportation in 2002, Uzhca was sent back to Ecuador.