Man, if you read one piece of badass investigative reporting today, read this.
In 1983, cruising laws were overturned, on the logic that since consensual sodomy was legal in New York state, attempting to find a partner for consensual sodomy ought to be legal too. In 1993, a court overturned vagrancy and anti-loitering laws in New York, on the grounds that it interfered with panhandlers’ First Amendment rights, and also were blatantly discriminatory, given that they criminalized being poor in public. (Most vagrancy laws were applied against men, although poor women were targeted under vagrancy laws prohibiting the selling of sex.)
And yet, for decades, the NYPD has continued to arrest people for violating these laws– 22,000 for vagrancy alone. These laws have led to the payment of tens of thousands of dollars in fines and other penalties, arrest warrants, and even jail time for some people who didn’t answer their summonses. For crimes that weren’t technically illegal!
Christ, man. I don’t think it’s too onerous to require that the police only arrest people for things that are actually illegal.
The right to use the streets as they like is something a lot of privileged people take for granted. But marginalized people do not necessarily have that right. Vagrancy/anti-loitering laws criminalize being poor or a person of color in public. With the glaring exception of anti-sex-work laws (incidentally, did you know that NYC is making it illegal for taxi drivers to knowingly transport a person who does illegal sex work?), most of these laws are applied against men, possibly because they’re considered more ‘threatening.’
And don’t get me started on cruising laws, which essentially criminalized flirting while being a queer man. I’m sorry, if it’s perfectly legal for a man to say it to a woman, it ought to be perfectly legal for a man to say it to a man.
According to the article, the lawyers are going through an absurd amount of shit trying to convince the NYPD to follow the law. NYPD, you are terrible at being cops. “Follows the law” really ought to be the bare minimum requirement for being a law enforcement official. I’m just saying, I’m pretty sure that that qualifies as kidnapping (for arrests) and theft (for fines). It would amuse me greatly to see the police arrested en masse for committing these felonies, but unfortunately I am not in charge of running the justice system. I have no idea why. I’d be excellent at it.
It would be one thing to have blatantly discriminatory laws on the books that criminalize marginalized people being on the streets (i.e. kyriarchal and immoral as fuck), but it’s quite another to keep prosecuting people for the violation of a blatantly discriminatory law that criminalizes marginalized people being on the streets and that DOESN’T EVEN EXIST. That is wrong on every conceivable level– social justice, civil liberties, human rights, legalities, literally everything.
Contact the NYPD commissioner here and ask him why the NYPD isn’t following the law.
That’s pretty screwed up alright. I heard suggestions of anti-begging laws here but as far as I know they were shot down. I have heard of the Guards arresting people for non offences though, usually for some variation of hassling them while on duty.
Are there any homeless advocacy and social charities in NY? Like the homeless soccer league? Maybe they could be used to spread the word about what is and isn’t legal.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
– Anatole France
This reminds me of the instances of transwomen being arrested for using the women’s restroom, when actually there isn’t a law stating that only females can use the women’s restroom. I love NYC, but sometimes the NYPD really pisses me off.
There seems to be an assumption in some places that the only reason why someone who is legally male would enter a women’s restroom wearing women’s clothing would be to peep on them or some other similarly creepy sexual reason… but I’ve never heard of this actually happening. I mean, I would hardly be surprised if it had ever happened at some point, but as potential threats go, I don’t think it’s a very realistic one. Meanwhile the kind of places where people are paranoid about creepers are often the kind of places where transwomen would risk getting beaten for… Read more »
This is why I’ve often been puzzled by: 1) A lack of partitions between urinals, and 2) A corresponding lack of unisex restrooms. Everybody pees. Everybody poops. There isn’t a special kind of urine or feces that is only produced by one gender–it’s all the same (rather nasty) stuff. So why do we keep segregating public restrooms? After all, integrated restrooms–coupled with the common lesson learned as young kids that it’s rude to peek into stalls–would actually make the infamous bathroom-ogling less common over time. After all, if using the same bathroom isn’t some strange, exotic thing, fewer people will… Read more »
I don’t have a problem with trans women using the ladies room. It would not other me. But I would not want to go to all unisex bathrooms. I don’t want strange men in the next stall while I’m doing my business. Public restrooms are awkward enough. Potential sexual attraction has no place in there and by that I mean, I don’t think most guys are pervs, but they can’t help checking out women they find attractive, and for that matter, women check out guys they find attractive. I don’t want to think about that while I’m washing the guck… Read more »
Just to play devil’s advocate: I don’t think by any means she should have been arrested, but just because there isn’t a specific law barring men from using women’s loos it’s entirely possible that theres a more general law which it might fall under.
It’s further complicated because most police forces have a smorgasbord of “failure to comply” or “disorderly conduct” or “public disturbance” laws which they can use against people who assert their rights when they’re being arrested for something that isn’t illegal.
The legal system basically says that, until it gets to court, a policeman’s opinion on what the law is matters more than what it actually is. And not everybody has the resources and/or connections to wait until things get to court.
There are 3 kinds of laws: 1. Things which are illegal and enforced. 2. Things which are illegal but rarely or never enforced. This is sometimes because the law is obsolete or just plain silly, but no one ever bothered to take it off the books. Other times is because the law is so rarely relevant that it’s obscure, and neither most police nor the general public is aware it exists. 3. As relevant to the article, things which are not illegal but are enforced anyway, at least until things get to court (and even then, sometimes they change the… Read more »
…I thought a bit later that maybe I should provide an example. Since a number of people have already covered that it’s not actually illegal for women to be topfree in many places, let’s go with age of consent. “Everybody knows” that it’s 18, right? (Usually with some exceptions to help prevent ludicrous situations from occurring, though those exceptions vary depending on what other laws exist in the jurisdiction.) Actually… usually not. In most parts of the world, it’s really 16. And the exceptions to that rule vary anywhere from 12 to 20. Even in the U.S., only twelve states… Read more »