Curses

I’ll tell you what — if cab drivers quit being such assholes and accept credit cards, I’ll gladly look the other way if they want to curse at each other:

A New York City cab driver has been fined $1,000 for launching a foul-mouthed tirade at another cabbie. The confrontation occurred Oct. 8, 2007, on the West Side of Manhattan when neither driver had a passenger.

Driver Malik Rizwan honked at fellow cabbie Zbigniew Sobczak after Sobszak cut him off, prompting Sobszak to jump out of his cab and use a vulgarity repeatedly.

Rizwan called the police and accused Sobczak of assault. A city administrative law judge found Sobczak guilty of verbal harassment, not assault, and recommended a $350 fine.

But Taxi and Limousine Commission Chairman Matthew Daus, in a ruling last Friday, increased the penalty to $1,000 and a 30-day suspension.

There was a time when cab drivers were given more leeway with language.

A 1982 legal decision in a case called TLC vs. Baudin found that a “driver’s use of profanity during a fight with a pedestrian was not misconduct given cognizance to the realities of life in New York City.” But Daus, in a letter to Sobczak, said, “To the extent that decisions issued before my tenure, such as TLC vs. Baudin, may be read to overrule the penalty of license revocation for verbal harassment or abuse, I would override those decisions.” “The city has changed over the years,” Daus said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s become more civil. … The days when drivers can curse at each other are over in my opinion.”

Then again, not all agencies agree:

Using profanity may be unprofessional for cabdrivers or newscasters, but cops are often free to shoot their mouths off, city officials said.

In fact, a well-placed F-bomb can be part of good police work, and may even help prevent the use of deadly force, said Andrew Case, spokesman for the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

. . .

The NYPD patrol guide calls on cops to be “courteous and respectful,” but does not explicitly forbid profane language.

Of the 4,024 complaints lodged against officers for “discourteous” (as opposed to offensive or bigoted) language in 2007, only 6.6 percent were substantiated.

And in 7.6 percent of cases, choosing to swear and protect was not only acceptable, but actually warranted, Case said.

The rest of the complaints were either unfounded or impossible to prove.

“If [cops] have used ordinary language and a person continues to do what was improper, [the officers] are allowed to raise the tone of the exchange,” Case said. “It is called using verbal force.”

Amtrak Julie, Meet Penn Station Sheila

She doesn’t have as a high a profile as Amtrak Julie — that media suckup — but she’s every bit as important, and probably more so, since people actually use Penn Station:

The voice that launched a thousand trips — on Thursday alone — was about to launch another.

Sheila Herriott, sitting in a dimly lighted control room with a microphone in her hand and hundreds of commuters at her beck and call, spoke in a throaty, cabaret-style voice that sent them scurrying toward various tracks throughout Pennsylvania Station: “This will be the final call on Amtrak’s Train 97, the Silver Meteor, en route to Miami departing at 3:15 p.m., making station stops at Alexandria, Richmond, Petersburg . . . . This will be the final call on the Silver Meteor to Miami departing at 3:15 p.m. All aboard.”

Basking in the glow of her computer screen, Ms. Herriott rolled her chair away from her desk and looked up at a half-dozen video monitors to see her audience chugging for their trains.

“Those people really depend on me,” she said. “They don’t know me personally, but over the years, they have certainly come to know my voice.”

For the past quarter-century, millions who have passed through Penn Station have indeed relied on Ms. Herriott for arrival and departure information regarding Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains.

. . .

Ms. Herriott, who began making track announcements in 1983, said she felt “every bit a part of the history and tradition of Penn Station.”

Know Your Rights

If you see something, say something. Except for monkeys . . . and perhaps pythons, too:

That monkey on the subway? Illegal in New York City, but not if the owner has a disability. The guy with the snake on the bus? Leave him alone. He needs it for emotional support.

The New York Police Department Patrol Guide, a thick and getting thicker collection of rules and regulations, has been amended to let officers know that guide dogs for the blind are not the only creatures considered service animals — and to give them a better understanding of which straphangers and bus riders are allowed to have members of the animal kingdom as riding partners.

Now, according to the Patrol Guide, it is not just the blind who can have service animals, but those afflicted with epilepsy, heart disease, lung disease and other medical conditions, namely those who say they need an animal to provide them psychological reassurance.

. . .

The NYPD would not elaborate on the Patrol Guide revision, a spokesman said, adding only that the guide is routinely updated. But Becky Barnes, a manager with Guiding Eyes For The Blind, a Westchester dog school that trains canines to work with the blind and visually impaired, said it is not uncommon for people to try to pass off exotic animals, such as pythons, as service animals.

How Do Deer Get To Staten Island?

It’s not the start of a joke. They swim:

Apparently, the deer population in Staten Island has been going up, and Friday, for the first time, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will release its first ever count of deer in the borough.

And these clever creatures aren’t taking the ferry or Verrazano like the rest of us, they’re swimming over.

“We suspect that they they are swimming over from New Jersey, deer are strong swimmers and the Arthur Kill is a narrow body of water,” said Arturo Garcia-Costas, of the NYSDEC.

Ed Koch Is So Badass, He Has The Power To Turn Trinity Into A Jewish Cemetery

1847’s Rural Cemetery Act notwithstanding, it is still possible to be laid to rest in Manhattan:

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch said on Monday that he planned to stay in Manhattan — for good.

Mr. Koch, who turned 83 in December, said that he had purchased a burial plot in Trinity Church Cemetery.

“The idea of leaving Manhattan permanently irritates me,” said Mr. Koch, who represented the East Side in the City Council and in Congress before being elected to the first of three terms as mayor in 1977.

Trinity Church, part of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, operates a nondenominational cemetery at Broadway and 155th Street. Trinity describes the uptown cemetery as the only active cemetery in Manhattan that is still accepting burials.

. . .

The cemetery is on the site of one of the fiercest battles of the American Revolution. Trinity describes it as a grassy retreat, dotted by century-old elms and oaks, and “a special place of peace and tranquillity far from the chrome and glass towers of central Manhattan.”

Those buried include Clement Clarke Moore, who wrote “A Visit From St. Nicholas”; the artist and naturalist John James Audubon; the actor Jerry Orbach; and Mayor Fernando Wood, who proposed that the city secede from the Union during the Civil War and was later elected to Congress, where his colleagues censured him for intemperate remarks.

. . .

A mausoleum at the cemetery offers above-ground niches and crypts, but only a few below-ground burial plots remain vacant. Cemetery officials said they were reserved for special citizens.

Mr. Koch chose a plot on what he described as a “small mountain” overlooking Amsterdam Avenue, and he researched the propriety of being buried in a non-Jewish cemetery.

“I called a number of rabbis to see if this was doable,” he said. “I was going to do it anyway, but it would be nice if it were doable traditionally.”

He said he had been advised to request that the gate nearest his plot be inscribed as “the gate for the Jews,” and the cemetery agreed.

He was also instructed to have rails installed around his plot, so he ordered them.

Being buried in Manhattan, Mr. Koch said, would also make it easier for former constituents to visit.

“I’m extending an open invitation,” he said.