About a month ago, a friend and I were standing on the sidewalk on NW Davis and 5th, having a conversation. He’s got bad knees, so he was kneeling while we talked. But we weren’t blocking the sidewalk. And a PPI officer rode up, aggressively telling us “we had to move.” I asked him why. He said “because you’re blocking the sidewalk for people who might want to walk around.” And my friend pointed out that we weren’t—that there was ample space either side of us to walk around. We got the “officer’s” card. But it was a strange interaction. “This isn’t about sit/lie,” he said. To which I thought, “what is it about, then?”

PPI officers are, in theory, regular citizens in security uniforms. But I didn’t feel that way when he rode up to us on his bike on the sidewalk. I felt like he was trying to intimidate me, and for no good legal reason. We went back to our conversation, although I couldn’t really concentrate. I was angry. I felt more like he was, I don’t know, impersonating a police officer?

I mention this story because there’s an interesting story in this morning’s New York Times about a man who was arrested by a real police officer for standing and not moving on a street corner in Times Square in 2004. That man, Matthew Jones, was chatting with friends at 2am on June 12, 2004. When an officer asked him to move, he refused, and turned away. He was charged, and given a night in jail for his trouble, with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest—a conviction overturned yesterday in the New York Court of Appeals. The judge wrote:

“Nothing in the information indicates how the defendant, when he stood in the middle of a sidewalk at 2:01 a.m., had the intent to or recklessly created a risk of causing ‘public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm,’”

Here’s the pertinent part:

“Something more than a mere inconvenience of pedestrians is required to support the charge. Otherwise, any person who happens to stop on a sidewalk — whether to greet another, to seek directions or simply to regain one’s bearings — would be subject to prosecution under this statute.”

So: the argument you’re “blocking a sidewalk for pedestrians who want to get past” is invalid, as long as there’s room on either side of you for them to get past. Although I can’t believe I’m arguing the legality of the issue, when on sheer blunt principle it’s so obvious the guy was full of it. But at least I’ll have the confidence to challenge his opinion more aggressively next time.