Shoulda been eating a Milky Way

[khaosworks]

Mouthful Gets Metro Passenger Handcuffs and Jail
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 29, 2004; Page A01

Stephanie Willett is a 45-year-old scientist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from Bowie whose skirmishes with the law had largely been limited to a couple of speeding tickets.

Until she was caught chewing inside a Metro station.

About 6:30 p.m. July 16, Willett was eating a PayDay candy bar while riding the escalator from 11th Street NW into the Metro Center Station. Metro Transit Police Officer Cherrail Curry-Hagler was riding up.

The police officer warned Willett to finish the candy before entering the station because eating or drinking in the Metro system is illegal.

Willett nodded, kept chewing the peanut-and-caramel bar and stuffed the last bit into her mouth before throwing the wrapper into the trash can near the station manager's kiosk, according to both Willett and Curry-Hagler.

Curry-Hagler turned around and followed Willett into the station. Moments after making a remark to the officer, Willett said, she was searched, handcuffed and arrested for chewing the last bite of her candy bar after she passed through the fare gates. She was released several hours later after paying a $10 fine, pending a hearing.

"We've been doing our best to crack down on people who are consuming food and beverages in our stations because we get so many complaints about it," said Lisa Farbstein, a Metro spokeswoman. "In this instance, the woman was given a warning, which she ignored, and she jammed the rest of the candy bar into her mouth and continued to chew."

Willett said she was being unfairly punished because she made fun of the police officer after Curry-Hagler issued a second warning before the arrest.

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

once, on the Raleigh system, a bus pulled over and the driver would not move until I got up, came to the front of the bus, and threw out my full bottle of diet coke, which I had opened to take a swig out of, closed and put back in my purse.

I wound up calling to complain as soon as I got to work, and was told that was astonishingly rude of the driver - they wanted to stop people from eating on the buses, but he had completely over reacted to me drinking out of a sealed container, and as the person who took my complaint said, "He seems to have forgotten that you are, after all, a customer."

He'd been driving that bus every morning for 3 months as I'd been heading to work, but he wasn't there the next morning, or ever again.

Here in Toronto, they sell food all through the system, getting huge rents out of McDonald's, Cinnabon, and more for in-station locations, that certainly pay a few times over for keeping a few extra maintenance people on staff to clean up.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

yeah. as you no doubt remember, there's plenty of food vending inside the fare-paid areas of the MBTA as well.

Food consumption IMO has little or nothing to do with mess on the subways. It has more to do with civic pride and people not being pigs. Actually, the worst litter I see on the MBTA comes from newspapers, not empty food containers or spilled food.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

we have big blue box recycling bins for newspapers in all of your stations here. Our stations and trains are MUCH cleaner than the MBTAs were, but that might be because we're Canadian and all...

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

The MBTA had recycling boxes for newspapers for a while, but they got removed after Sept. 11 2001 along with all the regular trash barrels. I don't have to tell you what this did for station cleanliness--even the most civic-minded people will litter if they can't find an appropriate disposal receptacle. Bomb-proof trash barrels are only now beginning to make their way into T stations.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I love Payday bars. :)

Sounds like that officer really had a bone to pick, though.

[mrlogic.livejournal.com]

What the heck? It was already inside her mouth?
It's illegal to chew inside the station?
What if you're chewing gum?

That's crazy.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

No, she had part of it left. Rather than throw that part out (or whatever), she put it in her mouth and ate it. So the entire action occurred within the station.

While I strongly suspect they blew this all out of proportion (this *is* Metro, after all) I'd have to hear more about the woman's actions. It is possible to say "Why don't you go out and stop real crime" (which is more or less what she was reported to have said) in a threatening or harassing manner - in which case they'd be justified in some kind of action (although probably not as extreme of an action as they took.)

Still, it's an amusing story, even if there's probably another side to it.

[shannachie.livejournal.com]

Somehow I don't find it funny. It seems to me to show that police officers have far too much power if they can detain a generally law abiding citizen for finishing a last bite of candy. In my country I ouwld probalby file and official complaint and send an invoice for time lost for nothing. Not that the police would be likely to pay such an invoice - but it would have to be processed through the ranks and might at least cause some embarrassment.

[katyhh.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with Yooh that I find this rather extremely creepy. I could understand if she wasn't allowed into the station until she'd finished chewing, but detaining her for that is just incredible ... it is something that would never, EVER happen over here and gives me a gut feeling of "dangerous country that, people have no rights" at times *sigh*.
I could also understand if a bus driver refuses to take passengers on who are eating (it happens over here, too, with ice cream or fries or such), but that'd be the hardest thing to happen, here.