by Bob Ross » Thu Jul 10, 2008 5:12 pm
The anti-alcohol ban is often enforced. Here's a classic story, but from time to time others appear in the local papers:
May 21, 1999
NYC; Quality of Life: Blind Rule 1, True Love 0
By CLYDE HABERMAN
DECIDE for yourself whether enforcement of the law was fair in the following case and, if so, whether fair also means sensible. The tale is offered without judgment. Sort of.
Its main characters are a married couple, Rachel Thompson and the Rev. Joseph Gilmore. He is senior minister at the South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. She just finished her second year at Union Theological Seminary in Morningside Heights. Hell-raising youngsters they are not.
Last Friday, after her final exam, on medieval church history, Ms. Thompson went to her car. A rose was pinned under a windshield wiper.
''I looked around for my husband,'' she said. (How many women can take for granted that their husbands are behind an unexpected romantic gesture?) Sure enough, there was Mr. Gilmore, carrying champagne on ice, two fluted glasses and hand-woven napkins -- a surprise to celebrate the end of classes.
Off they went to tiny Sakura Park, by Grant's Tomb. They sat sipping their champagne on a glorious late afternoon, while the bells of Riverside Church pealed and the light, in Mr. Gilmore's words, ''drifted down like gold dust.''
Does it get any better? ''You know how bliss can catch you sideways?'' Ms. Thompson said. ''This was one of those times when bliss came up straight away.''
And then came three police officers.
In near-silence, they handed the couple two summonses each, written up as ''open alcohol in public'' and ''possessing alcohol in park to consume.'' Ms. Thompson and Mr. Gilmore must go next month to Criminal Court, where they each face possible fines of up to $250.
So much for bliss.
As one officer recorded the violations, Ms. Thompson said, she and her husband tried to explain themselves, first by noting their religious roles. It was, she acknowledged later, a pretty lame point. ''I realize I'm skating on very thin ice,'' she said.
Certainly, the ticket-writing officer was unimpressed. ''Quality of life,'' she said in a low growl, according to the couple. She handed them the summonses and walked off with her colleagues.
''It was weird,'' Ms. Thompson said. ''It just wasn't a human interaction. If only they'd even asked why we were drinking. He could have been proposing marriage for all they knew, me with a rose in my lap.''
O.K., what do we have here? Nondiscriminatory law enforcement, an admirable notion? Or mindless application of City Hall's vaunted ''zero tolerance'' for any stain on the civic fabric?
On one hand, the couple were far from making public nuisances of themselves; they were the picture of romance, some would say. Couldn't the police have simply warned them to put the bottle away without any harm being done to the Republic?
On the other hand, who gets to decide that a middle-aged suburban couple's drinking Korbel in the park is a loftier pursuit than two street types' passing their white lightning back and forth?
THEN again, the police make such distinctions all the time. Tolerance is never at absolute zero. The beer flows freely and publicly at family picnics held on warm-weather weekends in northern reaches of Riverside Park. So does the pinot grigio at summertime concerts in Central Park. You don't see summonses when Mozart is in the air.
''We tell officers to use their discretion,'' said Edward T. Norris, the Deputy Police Commissioner for operations. Still, he said, the law against public consumption of alcohol ''is something we want to enforce -- it has been a successful cornerstone of our quality of life campaign.'' There certainly has been no shortage of summonses: 26,841 in the first four months of this year, by far the most for any ''quality of life'' offense.
Another point, said Edward Skyler, a Parks Department spokesman, is that ''it's not up to any one person to decide'' when it is all right to flout the ban on public drinking.
Mr. Gilmore says he is well aware of that. But he argues that the officers in Sakura Park were ''seeing the law with one eye.''
''There's no depth perception with one eye,'' he said. ''You see the facts but not the context.'' If anything, he asserted, this sweet, innocent interlude on a sun-dappled day enhanced the quality of city life.
Many might agree. All the same, ''we'll plead guilty,'' Ms. Thompson said.
''And throw ourselves on the mercy of a champagne-loving judge,'' she added.
