Re:Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City
by GrassFedAltCoin on Saturday March 14, 2020 @08:20PM
(#22579879)
Not being from New York, it was hard for me to comprehend how much political power the police union has there. Dating someone from there, and by extension taking a passing interest in the city's politics, it has been eye-opening to see how much influence their protests exert over the mayor's office/political process more broadly.
Re:Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City
by CydeWeys on Sunday March 15, 2020 @09:46AM
(#22583447)
It's crazy. Most of them don't even live in the city, and yet they have an unbelievably larger amount of political power per capita than any other constituency in the city save for higher-up politicians.
Police unions are the only unions that people on the right like, and they're the only unions that people on the left dislike. It's a weird inversion.
Re:Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City
by agensaequivocum on Sunday March 15, 2020 @10:26PM
(#22589166)
Nope, I dislike all unions within the public sector.
But it only really does anything for Taxi & Licensing Commission-plated vehicles (taxis, rideshares, black car services, that kind of thing). For every other vehicle, it doesn't do shit, and the cops don't care. They largely don't even live in NYC and most of them commute to work in cars. There's a big culture of police not enforcing parking regulations on themselves, so you see rampant placard abuse and personal vehicles parked illegally all over sidewalks and such near police stations. The cops mostly have a windshield view of the city (they almost never patrol outside of a vehicle, and they don't live here), so they see themselves as drivers and the inhabitants of the city themselves, especially cyclists, are othered.
So it's a horrible combination all around and practically what it means is that cops rarely do shit about vehicle infractions but go after cyclists with a vengeance. And the mayor is too chickenshit to do anything about it; he's afraid of upsetting the police union, and the police union is terrible (it almost always sides with cops even when they are guilty of absolutely egregious abuses of power).