West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: white Boy on July 29, 2004, 02:06:11 PM
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WASHINGTON - A government scientist finishing a candy bar on her way into a subway station where eating is prohibited was arrested, handcuffed and detained for three hours by transit police.
Stephanie Willett said she was eating a PayDay bar on an escalator descending into a station July 16 when an officer warned her to finish it before entering the station. Both Willett and police agree that she nodded and put the last bit into her mouth before throwing the wrapper into a trash can.
Willett, a 45-year-old Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) scientist, told radio station WTOP that the officer then followed her into the station, one of several in downtown Washington.
"Don't you have some other crimes you have to take care of?" Willett said she told the officer.
Washington has been under heightened security because of the continuing threat of terrorism. And last week, police declared a citywide crime emergency over rising juvenile crime.
The transit police officer asked for Willett's identification, but Willett kept walking. She said she was then frisked and handcuffed.
"If she had stopped eating, it would have been the end of it and if she had just stopped for the issuance of a citation, she never would have been locked up," Transit Police Chief Polly Hanson said Thursday.
Metrorail has been criticized in the past for heavy-handed enforcement of the eating ban. In 2000, a police officer handcuffed a 12-year-old girl for eating a french fry on a subway platform.
In 2002, one of their officers ticketed a wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy patient for cursing when he was unable to find a working elevator to leave a station. Unflattering publicity eventually led the police to void the ticket.
Willett was the second person arrested this year for eating or drinking, Hanson said. In addition, police have issued 58 tickets and given more than 300 written warnings.
By 2 cents...
I mean, come on... i understand they are trying to keep things clean, i rember d-metro once mentioned in singapore you can get a fine for spittin gum or something... but this is america, and i agree with her 100% when she said "Don't you have some other crimes you have to take care of?" , this is what pisses me off about the American Police. Crime still happens, they prevent only a small % of it, but people are always saying increase the police, well if the police were concentrating on true crime, and not people eating candy bars, or a kid smokin a joint. Becasue a kid smokin a joint is not a crime, (moraly), it is because the US government says so, but he is not hurting or bothering anyone, yet a cop could roll up, arrest him, he can get a several months sentance, have it on his record, and have it affect him for the rest of his life, and thats moraly correct...
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In Singapore, you can get fined for chewing gum and/or spitting...Spitting gum would just double it, I guess...LOL
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In Singapore, you can get fined for chewing gum and/or spitting...Spitting gum would just double it, I guess...LOL
lmao
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This is dumb. If she was causing that much of a problem, action should have been taken. Although she was eating where she wasn't supposed to, this was completely unnecessary.
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Metrorail has been criticized in the past for heavy-handed enforcement of the eating ban. In 2000, a police officer handcuffed a 12-year-old girl for eating a french fry on a subway platform.
In 2002, one of their officers ticketed a wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy patient for cursing when he was unable to find a working elevator to leave a station. Unflattering publicity eventually led the police to void the ticket.
The land of the... free?
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the thing with singapore is that its incredibly humid.. germs etc will fester faster in those conditions.
so they keep it clean... i've heard its immaculate over there.
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And I pay my taxes for this shit?
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And I pay my taxes for this shit?
what atxes...didnt u jus graduate high school yo!?
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And I pay my taxes for this shit?
what atxes...didnt u jus graduate high school yo!?
i can see you havent ;D
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And I pay my taxes for this shit?
what atxes...didnt u jus graduate high school yo!?
I graduated in '03. Even if I didn't graduate yet, it's still possible for me to have a job and have taxes taken out of my check.
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And I pay my taxes for this shit?
what atxes...didnt u jus graduate high school yo!?
I graduated in '03. Even if I didn't graduate yet, it's still possible for me to have a job and have taxes taken out of my check.
LMAO damn gotta love it, I mean i hate it when people say stupid shit outta nowhere.
anyways, those cops should be embaressed of themselves, go home at night " yeah honey today i arressted this kid for eating a french fry in the subway. stopping crime a criminal at a time" * falls back on couch and opens beer
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LMAO what a dumbass cop
and maradonna shut the fuck up , you say that shit like cops do that everyday.
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every place you go to, there's a person that takes their job too seriously and this is just one example... the rent a cop was probably picked on in high school, so as soon as he got some authority he turns into robo cop
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In Singapore, you can get fined for chewing gum and/or spitting...Spitting gum would just double it, I guess...LOL
dont they whip you for littering ? like in fornt of everyone ?
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Lessay you have a subway, and there's trash everywhere, food laying all over the ground, it's a fucking mess. You can't afford to have janitors do the incredible amount of maintenance it would take to keep the place clean, and when you post signs, people ignore them.
What's your options?
Make it illegal to eat in the subway.
Now; if it's illegal to eat in the subway; but there's nobody on the transit authority that will do anything about it... then people are going to eat anyways.
So then what do you do? You start writing tickets, and when the people don't stop for you to write a ticket, an insult to your authority, you arrest them for not only disobeying an order to stop, but for eating in an area where eating is banned. All totally explainable, I side with the cop, lock her ass up, disrespectful bitch.