NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Two NYPD officers have been disciplined after they were filmed shoving a subway rider out of a station Tuesday morning when the commuter confronted the cops for not wearing face masks.
NYPD Comissioner Dermot Shea called the maskless officers' behavior "absolutely inexcusable" Wednesday, as the cops were issued command summonses for violating federal law requiring everyone in the transit system to wear face coverings.
The penalty could cost the officers up to 10 vacation days.
"I think we're better than that, I think the public deserves better than that, and frankly I know the men and women every day are better than that,” Shea said. "But that's inexcusable."
Viral video from the incident shows the cops forcibly removing commuter Andrew Gilbert from Manhattan’s 8th Street subway station after he claims he began filming the officers while questioning why they were maskless.
“The male officer was playing dumb and claimed he couldn’t hear me. I kept asking him over and over, ‘Do you know it’s illegal not to wear a mask,’” Gilbert told amNewYork Metro. “I kept asking him the same thing and then he said, ‘You’re being disruptive,’ which I guess is their key word for doing whatever they want if they declare you disruptive.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was "troubled" by the clip and called the officers' actions "unacceptable."
“I was troubled by that video. I didn't like what I saw one bit,” Mayor de Blasio said during his daily news conference Wednesday. “I did not see everything, except for the clip at the time when the person's being removed, but I saw the officers not wearing their masks in the subway. That's evident, that's unacceptable.”
Under NYPD guidelines, all cops are required to wear face coverings when interacting with the public — regardless of vaccination status. Federal law also requires face coverings on public transit and in subway stations.
MTA acting chief Janno Leiber expressed outrage over the incident, saying cops should be setting an example for the public, noting that many officers have been seen maskless in the subway system
"And it's really undermining, that sense of compliance that we have obviously more than a few cops who are not complying,” Leiber said Wednesday.
The video comes as the MTA experiences a slow resurgence of mass transit commuters, with more and more people returning to in-person offices and schooling. The subway system recorded more than 3 million daily riders multiple times since the city’s public school system reopened for in-person learning last month; that amounts to about half the subway system’s typical daily ridership pre-pandemic.
"We're trying to bring riders back to the system. I don't want to see them being pushed out of the system by people who are not complying with the rules that the federal government sets," Leiber said. "Come on, enough."
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