NYC, where Revenue is more important than Rescue

Published on: November 18th, 2015 | Last updated: November 20, 2015 | Written by: Ray Cevoli

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What’s more important, writing tickets or allowing a fire truck to pass? For at least one NYPD ticket agent, tickets are far more important.

A friend of mine sent me this story, here it is uncut:

This afternoon an NYPD Traffic Enforcement Agent was ticketing cars on a narrow dead end LIC street, when the fire department showed up for a call at the other end of the block. When the first truck showed up, she didn’t stop writing tickets, and a construction worker helped the firemen squeeze by.

When the longer ladder truck showed up, it couldn’t get by, and only after finishing her ticket did the TEA move her stupid car. You could hear the second truck coming – but it was far more important to her to keep writing tickets than to move her car. She didn’t even try to move it until the ladder truck was waiting there a good 30-45 seconds – she was ticketing a car just a few feet away.

Fortunately there was no fire. But can you imagine if there was?

For extra credit, the first truck to show up – engine 238 – is actually from Brooklyn. Where were the LIC trucks? Maybe on another call, or in the case of engine 261, closed by Bloomberg – apparently to never reopen despite massive population increases in the area.

And for the record, real cops know enough to move their patrol cars when there’s a fire (or even a potential fire). Were Traffic Enforcement Agents not given the same memo?

Are ticket quotas and the 546 million dollars in revenue the city earns from ticketing drivers now more important than citizens lives?

How about it DeBlasio? Bratton?

Comments

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One response to “NYC, where Revenue is more important than Rescue”

1. PegLegGuy says:

   December 8, 2015 at 5:43 AM

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   Guys must’ve been foamin at the mouth!

   238 is from Greenpoint.

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