Tangentially related to my being asked to delete photographs I’d taken of children last 4th of July, a rather absurd situation from New York: a woman was ticketed for sitting on a park bench because she didn’t have any children.
It’s an only in New York story. A woman was given a ticket for sitting on a park bench because she doesn’t have children.
The Rivington Playground on Manhattan’s East Side has a small sign at the entrance that says adults are prohibited unless they are accompanied by a child. Forty-seven-year-old Sandra Catena says she didn’t see the sign when she sat down to wait for an arts festival to start. Two New York City police officers asked her if she was with a child. When she said no, they gave her a ticket that could bring a one thousand dollar fine and 90 days in jail.
The city parks department says the rule is designed to keep pedophiles out of city parks, but a parks spokesman told the Daily News that the department hoped police would use some common sense when enforcing the rule.
The spokesman told the paper that ticketing a woman in the park in the middle of the day is not the way you want to enforce the rule.
Yes, of course, pedophilia is a terrible thing. But this approach of assuming anyone who so much looks at a child that isn’t theirs is a pedophile is paranoid to the point of ludicrousness, and incredibly offensive to boot.
(via Joel Blain)