Gravity Knife Arrest in NYC.

[arnisador]

[h=1]You call that a knife? MTA worker Rudolph Simmons’ case over ‘itsy-bitsy’ blade dismissed
[/h] [h=2]The 59-year-old was arrested on his way to work for apparently bogus reasons. When he was searched, he had two knives on him, but the Bronx resident says they were small blades used to work on the subway.[/h]

Simmons is a power distribution maintainer. The job involves cutting cables and insulation placed beneath the electrified third rail.
The MTA issues track workers like Simmons tools, but they commonly carry their own knives. When you’re in a work gang, tools get passed around, and they don’t always come back to the owner.


When patted down by the detectives, Simmons had two knives, both smaller than the knives the MTA issues, he said. One was a so-called gravity knife, which opens with the push of a button.

A police official gave this explanation for why police confronted Simmons: Officers observed Simmons in the back seat of the livery car with a “gravity knife” in his hand. It was “in plain view,” the police official said.

That sounds like an itsy-bitsy lie. A Bronx judge and prosecutor apparently agreed. The case was dismissed Friday.

Here's a guy who may well need a one-hand open knife to do his job, but archaic knife laws put him at risk of arrest.

 

[Tgace]

Why were two detectives even there waiting for the guy to exit a cab? There's more to this story than a random police contact...

 

[arnisador]

Why were two detectives even there waiting for the guy to exit a cab? There's more to this story than a random police contact...

I wish it had been more clear on that--the story seemed to imply that the dismissal of the charges was in part due to a lack of reason to have stopped him but it wasn't explicit about that.