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| Re: On-Duty Metro-North Conductor Arrested (1446235) | |||
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Re: On-Duty Metro-North Conductor Arrested |
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Posted by Nilet on Fri Aug 11 11:29:38 2017, in response to Re: On-Duty Metro-North Conductor Arrested, posted by Andrew Saucci on Tue Aug 8 19:55:14 2017. There are probably very broad regulations that have some basis in law that pretty much permit the railroad to do whatever it wants within reason. It would probably take a good lawyer and a careful reading of the "tariff rules and regulations" to make a strong case, but restricting passenger movements is certainly within the rights of the railroad.Physically preventing passengers from exiting a train at a normal station stop would be a PR nightmare and the scandal would make the clever lawyer's reading of the tariff rules moot. That said, even if the clever lawyer could make the case that the MTA was allowed to bar your exit, they still couldn't have you arrested for failing to pay the fare for the journey you were forced to take. The railroad has essentially erected the equivalent of "one-way" signs for the platform at 125 St; it's as simple as that. Except that there's an actual law that makes it a traffic violation to disobey a one-way sign. The MTA has no law barring exit at 125th, nor do they have the authority to make such a law. Nobody in this thread is saying it's a crime to exit at 125th; they're making up bizarre stories about it being "theft of service." I have a hard time understanding why this has generated so much debate. It's probably the weird authoritarian attitude many SubChatters have. Since the MTA is an Authority, its policies must have force of law— and so they reach for whichever real crime looks superficially closest and try to make it fit. I've seen the pattern before; there was a thread about people who got arrested on an Amtrak platform despite having explicit permission from Amtrak to be there, where someone tried to claim that since they didn't have an Amtrak ticket, they were trespassing. Though they didn't spell it out, their logic seemed to be something along the lines of: Amtrak policy says you need a ticket to be on the platform; Amtrak is an Authority, so their policy has force of law; the superficially-closest crime is trespass; as such, they were trespassing. It resulted in a rather amusing thread in which someone ended up arguing the claim that Amtrak doesn't have the right to let people onto its own property all because they couldn't shake the idea that Amtrak Policy is a law that not even Amtrak can override, and they ended up making bizarre arguments about "entrapment" in much the same way that Italianstallion is trying to claim that a train which discharged a passenger at 125th doesn't discharge passengers at 125th. |
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