After a 27-year-old subway rider in New York City asked unmasked officers to wear their masks, they physically pushed him out the station's emergency exit door. "You're being disruptive," they told him.
Yes, the M.T.A. says everyone must wear a mask "inside subway stations and on trains," and yes, even the NYPD requires their officers to wear masks "in public transit settings," according to The New York Times. And yes, if you ask an officer to put on their mask, they might just shove you out the door.
From The New York Times:
Andrew Gilbert, 27, said he had just gotten off the train on his way to work at around 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday when he approached two officers at the Eighth Street subway station in Manhattan who were not wearing masks and asked them to put them on, in accordance with the rules.
The M.T.A. requires masks to be worn inside subway stations and on trains, and the Police Department requires officers to wear face coverings in public transit settings.
"The male officer sort of started playing dumb with me, saying, like, 'I can't hear what you're saying through your mask,'" Mr. Gilbert said on Wednesday.
The back-and-forth continued for about a minute, Mr. Gilbert said, before the officer shoved him about 80 feet backward and pushed him out of the exit door. "If you're not going to ride the train, just get out," Mr. Gilbert said the officer told him. …
"My biggest thought was just disappointment," said Mr. Gilbert, who is from Queens. "It's an endless stream of incidents like this and every single time it's sort of the same thing. Politicians talk about how terrible it is and then nothing happens, there's no follow-up. With the officers involved, there's never any accountability. And the same thing happens a week later."
The Police Department said on Wednesday that the incident in the video was under internal review, and the police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, called the actions depicted in it "absolutely inexcusable" at a news conference.
