Ticketed For Eating Doughnuts In A Brooklyn Playground

Since when is it illegal to eat a doughnut in a park? I guess it's when it's seen as an evil that warrants 2 police officers getting involved and the cops actually state:

If he just gave us warnings and told us to leave, he would get in trouble for “doing nothing all day.”

The police may not be ticketing for smoking in the parks, but they are still ticketing park visitors for crimes like...eating a doughnut in a playground. Yup, this weekend the police gave two young women in Bed-Stuy summonses for eating doughnuts in a playground while unaccompanied by a minor.

Now, I can understand the reasoning being that of child molesters hanging around in parks but this does nothing to stop the criminals as they will just move on. The real people suffering here are the innocent people being denied a park bench to eat a doughnut.

Just because someone wants to enjoy the sunshine in a park paid for by their taxes, doesn't mean they should be treated as a criminal.

Read the rest here:
www.activistpost.com...

As we were getting ready to move on, two officers approached us. Amongst themselves they debated whether the children’s toy next to us meant that we were there with a child. Then they asked us, “Are you here with a child?” We told them no. One of the cops moved on to the couple on a bench nearby, also ostensibly childless, while the other one asked for our IDs. We handed them over and soon we were being guarded by this cop as his partner took our IDs to their police car. My friend and I were confused. We had seen parks with gates that had a sign clearly stating that adults without children were not allowed in. This park had no such sign.

When the cop that was guarding us asked if we had ever gotten summonses before, I asked him if he could show me the sign that alerted people to the fact that they were about to commit a violation by sitting on a bench. We looked at the sign together. “That? I’m supposed to read that?” I asked. He said yes. It was a list of about fifteen park regulations. You would have to be no more than three feet away from it in order to read it. It looked something like this. Except there were no bullet points. Would they issue a kid a summons for standing on the swings? Or an adult, in the company of a child, a summons for taking off her shoes? According to the violation we got, 1-03(c2), “not complying with park signs,” they could do that. Based on my experience, I actually think they would.

And let's not forget those criminal Chess Players:

Chess Players Beat City
gothamist.com...

Pawn takes rook, check mate! As everyone had hoped those rascally Inwood chess players were vindicated in court today when a judge threw out the NYPD's case, saying that summonses were wrong. Which—since the tickets were for being in a park after hours and were written at 2 p.m.—they were. Of course, this doesn't mean that cops looking to fill quotas won't be coming after more chess players. Norman Siegel, who represented the players, advises adults to stay away from chess tables near playgrounds, since quota-filling cops can always cite a different Parks provision in future cases.

With the US becoming increasingly more and more autocratic I'm sure we'll see a massive uprising due to the loss of freedoms

Originally posted by starwarsisreal
With the US becoming increasingly more and more autocratic I'm sure we'll see a massive uprising due to the loss of freedoms

And the loss of donut shops near parks!

This is ridiculous.

bed stuy ?

the only reason for these park regs is to help curb drug deals I bet

kinda silly, but once it is on the books, you have to enforce it uniformly lest you be labelled a "profiler"

a better idea would be to blast kids TV show theme songs

it had nothing to do with doughnuts, it's a loitering deal designed to battle drug deals

The proper response would have been: oh we didn't know.

Hey we cant eat all these anyway ......you want a couple before we go?

Share the wealth....

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
bed stuy ?

the only reason for these park regs is to help curb drug deals I bet

kinda silly, but once it is on the books, you have to enforce it uniformly lest you be labelled a "profiler"

a better idea would be to blast kids TV show theme songs

it had nothing to do with doughnuts, it's a loitering deal designed to battle drug deals

Although I can see your point, if laws keep being created because of a few, the many are always going to be the ones to suffer.

Drug dealers will move to the next location. The Doughnut eaters get ticketed.

Not right.

reply to post by jude11


I agree, it is sad to see. There has to be better signage, and a verbal warning would have sufficed probably. It's gotta be tough down there, you can't go out at night, and during the day, you can only go to the right parks.

heck, we should sell fake "baby in a stroller" kits down there

A normal common sense approach by the police would have been to advise you of the rules, and let you collect your belongings and leave.

This is just auto bot idiotic behaviour by drones without the ability to think or apply a bit of reason to a situation.

The cops were probably jealous and wanted the donut for themselves and when they didn't give them the donuts they got ticketed. Use of threats to get donuts. Happiness all the time.

So let me get this straight...you cant eat sweets in a park by yourself because you're likely to be a pedophile? Are you kidding me? And how can they fine you when you haven't done anything except eat in a public area? They are allowed to fine you for the theoretical proposition that you may be a pedophile. The next thing you know they'll invent a machine that can predict the future, and they'll start locking people up based on predictions of the future. Worse yet, a machine that can read our thoughts, and they scan through for malicious thoughts of murder etc, and then lock you up based on a thought you had. And it will happen, mark my words. They are already punishing thought crimes on different levels.

Well at least this time they didn't get tazered or shot. I guess that's a small silver lining.

This is getting completely out of hand. The next thing you know, women will be eating bagels and lox in the park.

If a pedophile had been caught in a park eying little girls with bad intent, then the same people would be screaming "Where were the cops to enforce that rule"?!

The rules were posted. The women disobeyed the rules. I do think them going to court is extreme overkill, but if they were pedophiles, it would be appropriate and the cop doesn't know if they are or not.

If I enter a gated park, I'm going to read the sign...

So it's ok to be a pedo if you're not eating a donut on the bench? Or taking your shoes off?

reply to post by PsykoOps


I have no idea what you're talking about. If you want to discuss something, you're going to have to make more sense... I said no such thing, and I'm not even sure you were addressing me.

As a parent that recently uncovered a very dark, ugly and growing issue in the city of New York, I fully understand the need for this.

Some background can be found here:
flooginmcnoogin.blogspot.com...

For those too lazy to read it (I'm too lazy to repost the whole thing so we're even), I watched as at least 20 people tried to take photos of children in Central Park. Not one of these people was taking pictures of their kids. These were people scoping out a group of kindergarten kids and snapping pictures, basically, of strangers' kids. I learned, from a concerned dad, that these predators scope out school websites and show up on the designated park days, and take pics of kids, presumably, to photoshop their images onto kiddie porn. I thought the guy was nuts until I started approaching the photographers and every one of them reacted as if they'd been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. A cop's wife later explained to this father that this is a massive problem in and around NYC and that the cops, while well aware of it, are handcuffed when it comes to stopping it.

Almost every playground in the city has the no kids, no entry rule. If there's a playground in the park, and the playground is not fenced in, odds are, you cannot go in without a child. Is this wrong? Perhaps. Does it, potentially, make the children a bit safer? Absolutely.

This past weekend, at my daughter's weekly baseball game, I watched this guy wander over to watch the game. Not a parent of anyone in the game and he claimed he was a father of a young girl (less than a year old) and that he "just loved watching the young girls play."
Creepy as hell, he looked the part of the pervert. He was paying enough attention to the team chatter that he started learning the girl's names, cheering them on, shouting support etc.

When a cop car rolled past, the guy shoved his earbuds into his ears and wandered off.

Where did he go? to the area behind the game where all the teens and 20 something girls were laying out in their bikinis. And what, you ask, did he do next? Pretended to be playing with his ipod as he snapped photos of the girls. He would wander thru the field and walk right next to the girls, pretending not to look but the ipod was position between the girls legs, at their bodies etc.

It further confirmed my fears that this city is teeming with scum.

So, when the sign says "no entry without a child" and you enter without a child, you are putting fear into the parents and making the cops job that much harder. Do you deserve a ticket? A simple "get out" would, normally, suffice but, if ticketing these people means the word gets out that being where you shouldn't be is going to cost you and, possibly, put your name on a list that the cops utilize in an effort to keep our kids safe, so be it.

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
bed stuy ?

the only reason for these park regs is to help curb drug deals I bet

kinda silly, but once it is on the books, you have to enforce it uniformly lest you be labelled a "profiler"

a better idea would be to blast kids TV show theme songs

it had nothing to do with doughnuts, it's a loitering deal designed to battle drug deals

i don't buy this. bed stuy has become gentrified and a lot of the artists and "transplants" are moving there. i'm a few minutes away in williamsburg and the police are just as oppressive. the other day my friend was stopped leaving his apartment in the projects and searched because they thought he was buying drugs, but he just lived there.

reply to post by Crakeur


So taking pics of children in public is no no? You automatically label them scum. How you separate the photographers from perverts? Are you psychic cause that's the only way you would know?

reply to post by Crakeur


I have mixed emotions. #1 photographs of kids can be harmless and artisitic, and I believe everyone should have a right to photograph kids in a part. I mean look at Norman Rockwell's work!

But #2 as a father, I would not expect any police intervention, I would just turn my camera back on the suspects, introduce myself, and if anything seemed suspicious I would also get pictures of their license plates, or ask for their identification, or follow them back to their lair!

Maybe I am just a trouble-maker, but I don't like police very much, and I hate any new laws, but I am more than willing to see that justice is done one way or another.

Where did he go? to the area behind the game where all the teens and 20 something girls were laying out in their bikinis. And what, you ask, did he do next? Pretended to be playing with his ipod as he snapped photos of the girls. He would wander thru the field and walk right next to the girls, pretending not to look but the ipod was position between the girls legs, at their bodies etc.

Case in point. That guy needs to be on somebody's radar. The police might be a good start, but a concerned father is even better!

Lots of people get cited for masturbating in a park or at a public pool, but learning the girls names, and taking suspicious photographs is even further over the line! I don't believe access to the park should be restricted, but suspicuos behavior should be investigated.

reply to post by PsykoOps


why would anyone want to take a picture of my son playing with his friends? Why would a 50 something year old man show up in an area that is gated and reserved for the school, children of said school and their parents, set up a tripod with a 3 foot lens, and start snapping pictures of strangers' kids?

I asked each one of them and they had no answer. some stuttered about it being a free country, others turned and ran.