MTA chairman Janno Lieber on Monday defended the company’s police division for cuffing and eradicating The Bear screenwriter Alex O’Keefe from a Metro-North practice for allegedly holding his toes up on the seats.
O’Keefe, who’s black, posted a video exhibiting two MTAPD officers eradicating him from a practice after a white girl “said she didn’t like the way I was sitting,” he alleged.
Lieber acknowledged he hadn’t seen the video, which as of late Monday had gone viral on a number of social media platforms. However Lieber put the blame for the incident on O’Keefe’s obvious resolution to not put his toes down.
“If you’re putting your feet on the seats, you’re breaking the rules of our commuter railroad and of the subways of the whole MTA,” Lieber instructed reporters Monday when requested in regards to the incident. “This is our public square, we have to be courteous of each other.”
“The police have to get involved because somebody won’t take his feet off the seat?” Lieber added. “That already, to me, is already a situation that the person who did that ought to reconsider why they’re delaying people, why they have to get the cops involved — just take your feet off the seat.”
The viral video begins as two MTA law enforcement officials have already arrived; it’s not clear if there had been any efforts from both aspect to de-escalate the state of affairs when O’Keefe begins filming.
“You’re going to arrest the one black dude on the train because this white woman said she didn’t like the way I was sitting on the train?” O’Keefe asks because the video begins, pointing to an older white girl sitting one row forward of him.
One officer begins cuffing O’Keefe as he says “I haven’t done anything illegal.” A second officer responds, “Let’s go.”
“I am sitting on the train and one white woman didn’t like my presence,” O’Keefe says.
When the second officer says one thing inaudible, O’Keefe responds, “resisting what? What are you trying to arrest me for?” The primary officer responds, “You’re disorderly.”
The video ends shortly afterward.
One other video, posted by O’Keefe however shot by another person, reveals the screenwriter going through a wall, flanked by two officers whereas one other two officers write him a ticket.
In keeping with a press release from MTAPD, a Metro-North conductor reported O’Keefe round 10:25 a.m. Thursday after he “had refused to remove his feet” from an adjoining seat.
“Investigation, enhanced by body-worn cameras and on-board security camera video, revealed that a 31-year-old male was observed with both legs stretched across an adjacent seat,” the assertion continued.
In keeping with the assertion, the transit cops then ordered O’Keefe to get off the practice, and proceeded to cuff him when he refused.
MTAPD mentioned the screenwriter was issued a summons for disorderly conduct and was not positioned beneath arrest at any time.
