Posted on 07/05/2011 1:48:05 PM PDT by Red Badger
An elderly Upper East Side woman claims a sanitation agent chased her, threatened her with arrest and slapped her with a ticket for putting day-old newspapers in a city trash can.
Darbe Pitofsky, 83, said she was on her way for a cup of coffee around 6:30 a.m. on June 25 when she threw a brown bag filled with old papers in a city litter basket near her apartment on East 71st Street.
She said a sanitation worker quickly jumped out of his vehicle and demanded her information to write a summons.
“I froze,” Pitofsky told 1010 WINS’ Carol D’Auria. “He just frightened the hell out of me, scared me to death, I was terrified.”
She said the worker demanded a form of identification and threatened to “put her away” if she didn’t comply.
Pitofsky said it took the worker 25 minutes to write the summons and when she complained that it would cost her $100, she said he threatened to make it $300.
A representative for the Sanitation Department said street baskets are for pedestrian use only but added Pitofsky can challenge the ticket if she thinks there has been a mistake.
Litter baskets across the city are marked with stickers that read “no household trash” or “no business trash,” along with a warning of a $100 fine for violation. The Sanitation Department has a platoon of enforcement agents tasked with enforcing litter basket laws. Their duties even include doing detective work on trash suspected of being illegally dumped.
Pitofsky says she has already filed a complaint.
Her story is similar to that of 80-year-old Delia Gluckin, who last December, was also fined $100 for “improper disposal” for throwing her newspaper in a trash can in Inwood.
Do you think the city’s enforcement of the rules are too harsh? Let us know below…
This woman is 83, where's she gonna go anyway.
“Not everyone in NY is a leftist dumbass... My neighbors and I... agreed we’re not giving up a single inch to the Obastards without a fight.”
BRAVO! I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and I’m with you. Can you believe the number of people on FR whose sage advice always starts with “give up your home” and ends with “you deserve it”?
Exactly. They'd be overflowing with garbage in, well, a New York minute!
Must say I'm a bit surprised at the replies this story produced on a conservative forum. This woman was caught using the public trash cans, cans designated for pedestrian garbage, for her own household trash (bags of old newspapers). Probably wasn't the first time she did this either. Well, she was caught in the act, rightly ticketed and now people here are outraged!
It's no different in principle than those people who make midnight runs to fill up the local business dumpsters so that they can save money on trash service.
The ‘garbage cop’ should have just made her take it out and given her a warning.
What kind of society do we have nowadays that we even have a need for ‘garbage cops’?......................
Did you pay your fine before you left?
That fine plus interest is probably pretty big by now..............;^)
Hey, I've got an idea. Let's start with the "platoon of enforcement agents tasked with enforcing litter basket laws."
I'm starting to truly worry if we're going to be able to reverse the democrats' reign of terror on freedom.
And she actually stood around and gave this effing idiot her info? Unless he’s got an NYPD badge, and a gun, I wouldn’t stick around any longer than it took to give him the finger.
He probably does have a badge.
He hides behind it like he was some bigshot LEO.
A Barney Fife type who wants to be a ‘real’ cop so bad he has to harass 83 year old women to satisfy his ‘needs’....................
NYC is lost forever...................
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.