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| Re: On Duty Subway Booth Attendant Arrested (1436671) | |||
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Re: On Duty Subway Booth Attendant Arrested |
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Posted by BusMgr on Fri May 19 16:43:40 2017, in response to Re: On Duty Subway Booth Attendant Arrested, posted by randyo on Fri May 19 13:55:17 2017. I would suggest that if the MetroCard system does not well enough to provide s secure environment, then it should have been designed differently. That the system, as originally designed, created a fire hazard, and that panic bars had to retrofitted onto the service gates afterwards, there is evidence there that the focus of the design was for the NYCTA to protect its revenue stream, not to protect the safety and security of the passengers. This story would never have hit the light of day with the prior slam gate system. If emergency responders can no longer quickly access the system using MetroCards, then it is a fundamental flaw for which the NYCTA property protection personnel, and engineers, ought to be held accountable.If candidates for police officer don't want to undertake the risks involved in pursuing criminals, then they should choose a different career. Injuries of pursuit are part of the job. In fact, at time, criminals will use weapons affirmatively against police officers, and those brave officers will typically get injured. Police officers are taught, or ought to be taught, how to jump a turnstile in order to be able to quickly get around a subway station. Imagine how Insp. Harry Callahan would have responded if his partner said he was afraid to do so! While certainly it would be nonsensical to require that a person who does not have the means to do so must come to the aid of a police officer, the standard for aiding applies to everyone, regardless of employer. By statute, it is section 195.10 of the Penal Law, which reads as follows: "A person is guilty of refusing to aid a peace or a police officer when, upon command by a peace or a police officer identifiable or identified to him as such, he unreasonably fails or refuses to aid such peace or a police officer in effecting an arrest, or in preventing the commission by another person of any offense" (this is a class B misdemeanor, the lowest of all of crimes). The duty to aid occurs in only two specified circumstances. The problem is the difficulty of being able to prove that someone actually knows that they are being commanded to assist with an arrest, which is ordinarily impaired by the exigency of the circumstances, and further impaired here here the token booth glass makes communication more difficult. A quick search of reported cases in LEXIS doesn't show anything that helps interpret the statute as it would be applied here, and so that gets us to the point that there is no general duty to aid, but to establish that there was duty here is difficult to prove. Bottom line is that the police need better ways to get to the bad guys, that the subway was not designed with security in mind (other than the security of the NYCTA itself), and that police should be expected to put themselves at risk. |
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