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Brooklyn Cyclist Gets FOUR Tickets In A Single Stop
By
Ben Yakas
Published Aug 10, 2012
Modified Aug 10, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Aug 10, 2012
Modified Aug 10, 2012
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We thought it was bad when a cyclist received three tickets for running red lights over the course of a few lousy weeks. But David Segal one-upped that biker this morning, when he received FOUR tickets—including three for running red lights and one for disorderly conduct—during the same stop. "I told him, 'People have gotten shot on my block this last month, I don't know why this is important right now, I need to get to work,'" Segal explained. "He told me, 'If you keep talking back like this, I'll have to lock you up.'"
Segal, the former spokesman for City Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, was biking down Nostrand Avenue in Bed-Stuy when he was stopped by the cop around 9:30 a.m. this morning. "The cop speeds up, acts like he's right out of Starsky And Hutch," Segal described. "You just blew through those red lights," he says the cop exclaimed. Segal ended up in a heated back-and-forth with the officer as various locals looked on.
"Some old guys who were sitting on a bench there said, 'This is some BS! You should let them arrest you so you can sue them!' But I had to get to work," Segal added. He started taking photos of the officer (who you can see in the third picture above), which the cop was very upset about. The officer never explained what the disorderly conduct ticket was for: "He freaked out when I took his photo, which might have prompted it."
The whole stop took nearly 40 minutes, ensuring Segal would be late for work as communications coordinator at Long Island Progressive Coalition: "I thought they were taking as long as possible in the car to jerk me around, but I guess it would legitimately take a really long time to write that many tickets."
The stop happened in front of Tiny Cup, where Segal used to work as a cook. Segal reminisced about former run-ins with police there: "When I was a cook, there were three or four times I stepped outside in my apron, covered in food, and cops would stop and frisk me wearing an apron! I guess they thought I had a really elaborate disguise to buy drugs or something."
And these weren't even the first red light tickets he got this week—Segal says he was stopped while riding up Central Park West last weekend for "riding through a red light in an area without a street intersection! This is now four tickets for going through red lights in less than a week. Meanwhile, I have a motorcycle, I ride it pretty frequently, and I've never been pulled over."
To add insult to injury, once Segal made it onto the Long Island Rail Road this morning, a child sitting next to him defecated in his pants: "Of course that's what happens now," he said. "It's been a really great morning for me. Actually, it can only go up from here, so I think work is going to be really good today."
Tagged
bedstuy
bike
brooklyn
cops
cyclist
nostrand ave
nypd
police
tickets
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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