Because They Can Do That, Right?

I’ll tell you what though, the only thing cooler would have been if he fixed the ticket instead:

A city detective stepped up to pay the parking ticket received by a man making a holiday donation to a family in need on Staten Island.

The cop, who asked not to be named, said he wanted to help out after reading in the Daily News that [a good Samaritan] was slapped with a $60 ticket while dropping off a truckload of baby supplies for [an unemployed man] — even though both men insist the traffic agent told them it was OK to stop and unload.

Besides offering to pay the ticket, he got two cases of diapers donated by his local Toys R Us and also bought a gift certificate for [the man] and his four-month-old son.

“I was like, ‘oh man, unbelievable,'” the detective said. “I thought it was horrible.

“I don’t want to beat up on the traffic agent, the traffic agent’s got a job to do; but we get a bad rap as it is. Maybe the traffic agent had a directive to give out summonses in that particular area,” he said.

“I’d like to make it kind of right…There’s a lot of good cops out there. I want people to realize that.”

Earlier: The Mad Rush To Fulfill End-Of-Year “Productivity Goals”.

The Mad Rush To Fulfill End-Of-Year “Productivity Goals”

Which is to say, apparently there is still ample opportunity to meet one’s ticket quota:

[A Staten Island good Samaritan] and the [person he was helping] stopped outside [the man’s] St. Marks Place apartment and asked a traffic agent if they could leave the truck there for a few mintues, explaining they were unloading donated supplies. They said she assured them it was fine.

“I run in the door; that same woman runs to my car, tickets it and then runs down the street,” [the good Samaritan] said.

When Cassettes Ruled The World

I think there’s a point in this paragraph somewhere, though it jumps around quite a bit:

Perhaps even more relevant, Staten Island is not an incubator of preciousness; it seems allergic to preciousness. Before there were artisanal-cheese mongers in Williamsburg there were painters, performance artists, tattoos, eccentrics, an alternative-culture elite. Staten Island has a lower share of residents with bachelor’s degrees than any borough except the Bronx.

Then there is the catnip of old cassette players:

At the same time, though, the island’s North Shore does not conform to the borough’s clichés. (And in truth the borough on the whole has become less like its image: In 2010, 52 percent of Staten Island residents under the age of 18 were non-Hispanic whites, a drop from 73 percent 20 years earlier.) The area surrounding the Homeport site is less suburban, far less well off, less white and grungier than much of Staten Island. You will see graffiti, junkyards, abandoned cassette players and a methadone clinic a few doors down from a sleekly laid-out clothing store — elements that are catnip to a certain kind of 26-year-old.

Third Term Meltdown Watch: Staten Island Job Approval Ratings Lowest In City

And Staten Island is usually his wheelhouse:

Citywide, Bloomberg had a 54 to 35 percent job approval rating, up from 45 to 43 on July 27, and his best showing since the Christmas blizzard, according to a poll from Quinnipiac University.

But on the Island, Bloomberg has only a 39 percent approval rating, with 56 percent of borough voters disapproving of his performance.

It was Bloomberg’s worst showing in the city.

It’s not the kind of reception Bloomberg is used to here. The borough put Bloomberg in office in 2001 and helped him stay there in 2009.

The Island result baffled Quinnipiac pollster Maurice Carroll.

“I don’t understand why Staten Island’s number is so low,” he told the Advance. “People like him out there.”

The Vermont Of The Five Boroughs

While Anderson Cooper and everyone else were waiting down in Lower Manhattan for the financial capital of the world to be wiped away, the real story may have been in Staten Island, where the City’s hurricane disaster plan seems to have fallen short:

Firefighters in inflatable rafts saved 61 adults and three babies from the floodwaters, leading Mayor Bloomberg to praise the rescue effort.

But locals were fuming over what they found when they returned: flooded living rooms, destroyed cars and water animals in the streets.

They said they would have moved their valuables to higher ground and driven their cars out of the area if they thought they could be in danger.

“Somebody dropped the ball,” said [a 26-year-old resident] of Bulls Head, S.I., whose car and basement was damaged by flash flooding.

“[The water] was 5 feet right there. And this was the safe zone.”