Civility Police? What Next....Crotch Cops?

Fiorito: Transit cops get tough, but why not get real?

Wed Oct 28 2009

As you know, the TTC is getting serious about civility on the subway: no feet on seats, and so on. You could get fined.

Daniel was standing outside the coffee shop. He was wearing a Red Sox baseball cap. He had said he had a story. We went inside where it was warm.

He said, "I was coming out of the subway the other day – Bloor and Yonge, the Park St. exit. I was on my way to a meeting.

"They're working on the street and there are these blue cages on the sidewalk."

The blue cages are there to keep us safe from the pitfalls of construction. Daniel said, "I saw these on the ground." He reached into his pocket and pulled out two tickets that had been issued by a TTC transit cop.

"They weren't crumpled. They were neatly folded. I picked them up. I noticed they'd been issued at 1:40 p.m.

"I found them around 5:30 p.m. My first thought was, wow, someone's not taking the crackdown seriously."

The crackdown?

As you know, the TTC is getting serious about civility on the subway: no feet on seats, and so on. You could get fined.

I sat up straight.

Daniel said, "Then I noticed the address on the ticket."

The address was that of a downtown shelter for homeless men. The first citation was for the possession of dangerous material on TTC property, with a fine of $425.

The second was for interference with the ordinary enjoyment of the transit system, a vague and punitive add-on worth another couple of hundred bucks.

I know what I think, but I waited for Daniel. He said, "Come on – $660 in fines for a guy who lives in a shelter?"

I asked Daniel why he was interested. He thought maybe there was something he could do to help the guy fight the tickets.

"If he's living in a shelter, these tickets are the least of his problems."

I looked at Daniel. He looked at me. I had an hour. Daniel said he was free. We hopped in his car and headed over.

There were several men killing time on the sidewalk in front of the shelter when we got there.

The men said they hadn't seen the guy whose name was on the tickets. I understood them to mean they didn't know me from Adam, or maybe I was a cop.

And also no one who works in a shelter is going to tell you anything on a moment's notice if you are an outsider, not unless you clear it up the line, and up the line tends to be hard to reach in a hurry.

Somebody saw him then.

The man who'd been issued the tickets was making his way along the unsteady street – lean and tousled, socks but no shoes, a wad of toilet paper pressed to his face.

As the man drew near, I asked if he remembered the tickets and I got a whiff of the solvent that was soaked into the wad of toilet paper, and I understood what the tickets were for.

The man looked at me, and he inhaled and he exhaled, and he smiled; no, he did not remember.

And someone from the shelter came out then and took the toilet paper away and led the man inside.

On our way back downtown, Daniel said, "You wonder why the TTC guy didn't call for someone to come and help instead of giving him a ticket."

I wonder, too.

The man will ignore his fines.

The tickets will be sold to a collection agency. The agency will call the shelter and the penny will drop.

The man who sniffs solvent will still need help.

Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.