About a week after the big ticket scandal broke I found myself in the conference room surveying a map of citywide skywatch deployments (I will have to one day write a bit about this ingenious concept I invented) when I got a call from a Boro Park resident and good friend of mine, the venerable rabbi Moshe F.
“Commissioner, I have a fistful of double parkers that I need taken care of! The local precinct is refusing to help me out. What should I do?”
“Moshe, haven’t you been reading the papers?”
“Of course, but what’s the problem? Can’t you do anything for me?”
Knowing full well that Charlie might have a wire up on my own phone (you just never know these days), I had to play this the right way. But Moshe does represent a significant voting block that might be of importance to me in my planned mayoral bid, so, of course, I had to help him out.
“Moshe, we can’t just ‘take care of’ or ‘fix’ summonses. That would be illegal, corrupt, and ethically offensive. But, of course, if there are clerical errors we can void the summonses out.”
“But there are no errors, commissioner, I just need these to go away!”
“Of course there are errors, Moshe. There always are. Send them on down and I’ll have someone prepare the necessary paperwork.”
Realistically, are there going to be any errors in the summonses? Probably not, but we’ll just make something up that sounds good.
Folks, please take this as an object lesson in how the real world works. The losers at the bottom of the bureaucratic ladder have no recourse now that they can’t just make summonses disappear. But guys like me who are on top of the world? We just invent official procedures, forms, and log books to make everything appear to be kosher.
You might call this hypocrisy, I simply call it business as usual for the politically connected. Please remember that as you consider contributing to my Police Foundation slush fund. I have a few more Harvard Club dinners lined up that I need to have paid for. Thanks in advance.
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