Georgia:

Transit police handcuffed and cited a man who sold a $1.75 subway token to another rider who was having trouble with a token vending machine. Transit authority spokeswoman Jocelyn Baker said Friday that the officer “acted within the law” after he spotted Donald Pirone, 42, selling the token Nov. 30 inside the West End subway station

Instead of giving Pirone a warning, the officer decided to handcuff him and give him the misdemeanor citation under a 1992 state law that bars passengers from selling Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority tokens, she said.

“What you’ve got to keep in mind is that fare abuse is a chronic problem,” Baker said. “It costs MARTA millions of dollars every year.”

Baker acknowledged that Pirone sold the token at face value and did not make a profit. But the law is the law, she said.

“There are customer service phones for people who are having trouble getting tokens out of the machine,” Baker said. “The fact is, our officer acted within the law.”

Well, okay. Perhaps he did. But is that really the point? Is a police officer’s responsibility to keep the peace, or to actively seek out pissant misdemeanors and slap handcuffs on the people who commit them?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 8:36 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.