Is Your Stoop Private Property?
Maybe not, based on this tale of post-DNC speech imbibing on a Park Slope stoop that resulted in a $25 ticket. Here’s the tale from Park Slope Parents: My husband was IMing and having a beer last night on our stoop after Biden’s speech…NYPD roll up in a patrol car and busted him for an…
Maybe not, based on this tale of post-DNC speech imbibing on a Park Slope stoop that resulted in a $25 ticket. Here’s the tale from Park Slope Parents:
My husband was IMing and having a beer last night on our stoop after Biden’s speech…NYPD roll up in a patrol car and busted him for an open container violation for 25 bucks…he was very polite and told the NYPD he was appreciative of their presence, but asked asked about the public/private space concept, and he explained that if I was behind a fence or gate I would be ok. Since we don’t have a gate, the set-back from the sidewalk didn’t matter.
I was reading a bit about this online today…there is some opinion that the officer needs to report the actual brand of the alcohol being consumed or it won’t hold up in court. The cop actually asked him “What kind of beer are you drinking?” which I thought was odd at the time, but he didn’t write the brand on the ticket. Anyhow, the cops were polite and my husband was polite and overall just a goofy story…we’ll probably just write the check for $25 and mail it in rather than burning up a bunch of time contesting the thing.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Park Slope Row. Photo by senatorpeter6.
What about front porches? Not screened in porches…but the kinds in WT, south slope, Ditmas Park that are pushed back off the main street, without a fence surrounding them and still in public view?
It’s private property, but it is in plain view
What if you have a license to carry a corkscrew?
So if I decide have a glass of wine on my stoop I’ll make sure to leave the corkscrew in the house lest that $25.00 fine become a jail sentence!
I’m going to stage a Coup to stop all this talk about Poo!
Hey “I disagree” the police will tell you that the enforcement of the open container law HAS had a significant inpact on crime. They in most neighborhoods pat the drinker down and if they find a weapon its a least a year in jail so the people drinking have stopped carrying weapons. Now when they get drunk they don’t kill anybody…..
FatLenny wrote: “I’d prefer the cops pay more attention to the hypodermic needle and condom wrappers I’ve found recently in my front yard, than to the beer in my hand.”
So here’s the thing: We all think we’re good upstanding citizens, which we are, lol, and that the cops should go after those who are not (that group of 8 kids wearing do-rags and drinking Colt 45).
But just like the cops are being asked to record stop-and-frisks by race, to ensure that minorities aren’t the only ones being stopped, so the cops have to enforce open container laws against all lawbreakers. If that’s what it takes to show certain groups that the law is being enforced fairly and squarely against all comers, so be it.
A Puerto Rican kid who used to work for me, who was definitely wearing a doo-rag and listening to hip-hop while sharing a forty with a friend, albeit behind a fence in a closed yard (there goes that theory) was approached by two undercover cops. The cops wrote them up for open container. Then they told my friend to pour the beer on the ground, which he did. Then they gave him a ticket for littering.
See what you’re missing?
I like that Flabushwhacker. And the hunched back and shoulders they come to suffer from after hours of intense labor can be known as the “Throop Loop Stoop Poop Scoop Troop Droop”
“the Throop Loop Stoop Pooper”
Why don’t the neighbors band together to form a clean-up brigade: the Throop Loop Stoop Poop Scoop Troop.
z, I’m ashamed to admit I was going to ask that very question, but wanted to see how long this thread would go without any mention of the Throop Loop Stoop Pooper. We made it to 34!