I just attended the 114th precinct community meeting tonight with u/Miser. We saw two cop cars illegally parked outside the meeting (which someone later mentioned), which really set the tone. Somebody from the police committee came around asking how everyone had heard about the meeting, and was surprised that so many people had heard about it from Reddit. I’m not 100% sure he knew what Reddit was.
The meeting started with the moderator asking everyone to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which gave me flashbacks to elementary school. Once all the commies were weeded out by this patriotic exercise, they gave a couple of cops the Cop of the Month award for rendering life-saving aid to a stabbing victim. The commanding officer of the precinct, Deputy Inspector Kenneth Gorman, gave a rundown about crime statistics. He says all major crimes are down except grand larceny, which is mostly (1) scams, and (2) car thefts of vehicles left running and double-parked with the keys still in the ignition.
Then the question and answer session started, and things got interesting. An elderly man asked about the car driver who killed Dolma Naadhun. He said he had heard from "rumor" that the driver had no license. He wanted to know if she had been arrested. Inspector Gorman said (1) no arrest had been made, and (2) sometimes people die and it's just an accident.
Then u/Miser spoke up. He said that accidents happen within a context. He cited the NYPD's own statistics about its non-enforcement of vehicle-related violations, including zero or close to zero violations issued for obstructed license plates, overlength (e.g. overly long trucks), bike lane blocking, etc. He pointed out that we could walk outside in any direction right then and there and see plenty of obstructed plates. He argued that these numbers showed that the precinct had basically given up on enforcement of car-related offenses that endanger pedestrians and cyclists, and created the overall context where a driver can run a stop sign and kill a 7-year-old without getting arrested for it. Inspector Gorman denied giving up on enforcement. He said his department couldn't be everywhere and enforce everything, which seems like a poor excuse to me for not enforcing low-hanging fruit that happens right in public view.
Another elderly man then spoke. I will call this man Bootlicker, because he expressed the opinion that criticizing the "heroes" of the NYPD instead of just saying thank you was a "crime." I'm not kidding or exaggerating, that's what he said. He said anyone who puts on that uniform is a hero even if they do nothing. Inspector Gorman actually had to distance himself from some of this comment. He said he welcomed criticism.
Another man spoke, who I will call Plaid Shirt. Plaid Shirt started by saying he didn't know u/Miser or care to know him, and then went on to talk about pedestrian safety and how the cops should lead by example. He pointed out that two cop cars were illegally parked right outside the meeting. He described cars, including cop cars, double-parked, parked in sidewalks, or parked in crosswalks, and pointed out that this diminishes visibility. He said he understood that sometimes cops had to break rules in the course of doing their jobs but a lot of this was obviously not necessary. He said he noticed cops putting on their lights to speed through an intersection and then turning off their lights when they're through.
Another elderly man asked if the marijuana stores coming up in Astoria were licensed. Gorman said they weren't. A different elderly man said the fines for unlicensed marijuana selling were only $250 and this wasn't enough and we should all complain to our electeds to make the fines $5000.
A woman then spoke up in defense of ebikes, pointing out that lots of regular people including women and children use them, and that the major cause of adult deaths was car accidents. She pointed out that Gorman had mentioned earlier that he'd rather educate than enforce, and asked what he was doing to educate drivers that parking in bike lanes or sidewalks wasn't allowed.
Gorman said they handed out fliers, and then said what I think was his dumbest comment of the evening. He said that cops have discretion about whether or not to give tickets (that's fine) and they were therefore not going to give tickets to someone who parked in the Crescent St bike lane because they were going to the hospital with a heart attack. He kept coming back to this hypothetical, as if it's the normal reason why people park in bike lanes or sidewalks. He also said he wasn't going to prioritize the "inconvenience" of a cyclist over the life of a person going to the hospital.
Then I got mad and spoke up and pointed out that most of the time, when drivers park where they shouldn't, it's not because they're going to the hospital. No one is asking the cops to ticket people going to the hospital, and when cars park in the wrong place, they actually *endanger* people, not just inconvenience them. Gorman basically admitted this was true but then kept coming back to the damn hospital.
Then things got ridiculous. A woman said she was a car driver in Astoria. She asked the cops to do more enforcement against e-bikes and cyclists generally because they don’t have insurance and supposedly don’t pay taxes and don’t follow the rules, and if she hits a cyclist, her car “gets it,” while the cyclist doesn’t. u/Miser broke the rules by speaking directly to her to say that the cyclist’s LIFE gets it and that couldn’t be compared to a car. Bootlicker informed u/Miser that a car was Very Important. There was a lot of cross-talk, and the moderator immediately closed the meeting.
I think it was valuable that so many people from Reddit showed up to this meeting. I don’t think it changed the officers’ minds or attitudes, but I think it showed them that the community cares more about non-car drivers’ safety than they might have thought. Let’s put it this way: if the pro-pedestrian, pro-micromobility contingent hadn’t shown up, Bootlicker might have been the median voice, and cops might come away thinking he’s the only kind of person in the community.
Originally posted on r/MicromobilityNYC and crossposted to r/Astoria.