828: Minor Crimes Division

Hey there, podcast listeners. I'm here with a quick announcement for the show, and that is, if you have not heard, Sarah Koenig is back with a new season of Serial, and it is about Guantanamo. And I just want to say, even if you think you know everything you want to know about Guantanamo already, and even if you think you have no interest at all in Guantanamo, you want to listen to the first episode of this show and check out what they found. What's happened is that enough time has passed that people are talking, guards, prisoners, interrogators, commanders, detainees, and what Sarah and her co-host, Dana Chivas, are interested in is what was it like? What was it like to be inside this experiment that the United States wheeled into existence, this weird prison and court that we made from scratch, with its own surreal rules, popped in the middle of the Caribbean where, in their off hours, the young military personnel were drinking and partying like crazy?

So here's a good one. I'm going to get off the bike for this one.

Well, please meet Gersh Kuntzman. Guy in his 50s, gray beard, quick with a friendly smile. We're riding bikes around lower Manhattan, looking for illegal license plates.

What mostly happens is I'll be biking along, and when you've looked at literally thousands of plates, you can see right out of the corner of your eye if something's wrong. Often even just a fake plate will have a different glint in the sun. In this guy's case, I can see it's a covered plate.

Covered plate, meaning it's in a little frame with some sort of plastic over the plate.

Now, plate covers are illegal in New York. This one's especially egregious because I don't know if you notice, and I'll just paint the word picture for your radio listeners, it's a shaded one.

Shaded with some special stuff. so if you're in the car directly behind this car, it looks normal. But if you look down on the plate from above, the way traffic cameras do, it's black. Unreadable. So there's traffic cameras that catch you when you speed or run red light.

And once you start seeing it, you can't stop seeing it. The majority have been people in law enforcement. Court officers, firefighters, cops, DAs, federal officials.

And you know that they're police officers, because you see stuff on their dashboards, stuff like this.

Yeah, placards. A lot of placards. Hotspots, are near precincts, near firehouses, and definitely near courthouses.

We're actually next to a courthouse and a detention center on a short block at Baxter and Bayard. And this car that Gersh has spotted, a gray Audi, is one of four that we see with obscured plates. You're looking on his front dashboard. What's it say there?

Well, so this is actually a Manhattan detention complex authorized parking. This is a Department of Corrections employee placard. But if you notice, the plate was from Jersey.

If the owner of the gray Audi is an employee of the New York City Department of Corrections, they're supposed to live in New York. It's forbidden for them to live in Jersey. And so they seem to be evading traffic cameras. Maybe they're living illegally out of state. And they've also got darkly tinted windows, which are illegal in New York.

It just, it, just, what it is, it just, it just rankles me. It's just like, it's hiding in plain sight.

Looks again at the placard under the car's windshield.

I mean, this guy's a real dick. I can't see. He's covered up when the placard expires. My guess is this is an expired placard anyway. And he may not even work for the city of New York anymore.

The four screws on the plate need an Allen wrench.

I'm going to see if my Allen wrench will fit this one. If it will, I'll take it off and we'll have some fun.

Okay, so you're pulling an Allen wrench out of your wallet.

Well, I always have an Allen wrench in my wallet. You don't have an Allen wrench in your wallet? I don't have the right size, Allen wrench. Let me check my bag. Travel with a set of tools.

He looks, but turns out he doesn't have the right tool, so he leaves the license cover on the car. That's rare for Gersh to not be able to fix the situation. Most times what he finds is drivers have painted over a letter or a number on the plate or bent the plate so it's unreadable. Or they've crammed leaves in the license plate holder. They're actually fake leaves with magnets.

I usually start in the front.

He pulls out his phone, selfie style, and it's record.

Well, hi everybody. It's Gersh Kuncin. It's Good Friday, and I want to say it's a great Friday. Look at this. I got a corrections officer with a New Jersey car.

He shows the viewers, the plate cover and how it hides the plate from the cameras. He's done about 250 of these videos. Gersh's friends have tried to convince him to stop. They're scared. some driver is going to freak out on him and really hurt him.

So he moved the piece of plastic. Unfortunately for him, he didn't look in the car. The guy was sitting right there. The guy was also a cop.

To be precise, the guy was not a real NYPD cop. He was in a local neighborhood patrol.

So he called the cops and the cops arrested Adam and charged him with criminal mischief. Now that's the most hysterical part of it, because criminal mischief is generally like a graffiti charge. Like if you damage someone's property, you get charged with criminal mischief. In this case, it's a weird charge, because he didn't actually damage anything. He actually undamaged or repaired the damage the other guy did by covering his plate.

The first spin of the irony ball for Gersh was a kind of Dylan-esque protest song that he wrote for his friend Adam.

But the cops call it criminal mischief. They'll charge you in the fourth degree. The cops call it criminal mischief.

It's whatever they decree.

Then, maybe two days after Adam was arrested, Gersh started unvandalizing plates himself.

Something clicked in me saying, wait a minute, I should try to get arrested as a newspaper reporter, as a journalist, which would be awesome, getting arrested. Or, even better yet, like getting punched out by somebody on camera. Like this, is the height of my career. I'm not going to win a Pulitzer, but getting punched out by a cop would be awesome.

That didn't happen. Not even close. But Gersh has seen some other responses by law enforcement to his videos. When he shoots one, he likes to send it to the agency that employs that particular car owner. So, videos about scofflaw cops go to the NYPD, firefighters, the fire department, and so on.

Now, in fairness, I will say I think the NYPD did something. Because about six months ago, I started noticing far fewer police officers were defacing or covering their plate. There have been less police officers involved in these kind of shenanigans. I still notice court officers, federal officials, and firefighters. And then I asked the NYPD about that, and they won't even take credit for when they do something right.

There are a handful of other people in New York who do this kind of license plate street justice. But Gersh is the most visible by far because of his videos. He's gotten the word out. At this point, Gersh's exploits have been written up in the New Yorker, in the New York Times. He's been on TV.

So, it's weird in some ways. Like, I've been a reporter for 30-something years in this city. And this is ultimately the most successful thing I've done in terms of bringing light to something that is actually a real problem. Like, traffic enforcement agents are now writing more tickets for it.

That said, the wrong that Gersh is trying to correct is so small. in the grand scheme of things. Why is he the person who ended up leading the crusade for unobstructed license plates? You know, I mean, he's not this way with other petty crimes. You see somebody jumping a turnstile, he doesn't care.

But also, a bit of a showman. I'm a bit of a showman. And I'll admit that, yes, I am a ham. I am a performer. But, why can't a journalist have a little fun?

That's actually one of my favorite things about Gersh's videos. He looks like he's having so much fun.

You know, New York life, it doesn't have a lot of joy in it. It really doesn't. Like, it's really kind of drudgery. most of the time. It's a great city, whatever, but it's drudgery.

And I don't know what it is.

It's just like my inner soul is just singing.

Well, later in my program, minor crimes, and the people who appoint themselves to stop those minor crimes. I once read this great crime writer who said that what's interesting about a murder case is that a murder reveals so much about all the people near the crime. We see who they really are. Today, on our show, we demonstrate that this is not just true for a cold-blooded crime in the first degree. It's true for the tiniest human infractions.

Harriet Court existed for a reason. We were bad. There were four of us. Me and three sisters. Sean was the oldest.

So growing up, I would describe myself as I was a snitch. I'm just going to say it, a tattletale.

I was the middle child, the nerd and the know-it-all, the sneakiest of the bunch. Then there were the two youngest girls, Kamalita and Robyn.

Kamalita and Robyn were like, they was just what you call the wild childs. It was just whatever with them. If it could be done, they did it. They're going to try it.

They were born months apart, and Robyn passed away some years ago. But no one ever really thought of Kamalita and Robyn as individuals. They were one interconnected unit, like Tom and Jerry, Bonnie and Clyde, or Earth, Wind, and Fire. Here's Kamalita.

They used to call us the Devil and Daniel Webster, because whatever I came up with, she would follow me. Or whatever she came up with, I'm going with you, girl. We're doing it together. We went to school together. We wore the same clothes.

And then there was my mom. My mom was not one of those, because I said so kind of moms. She wanted us to know that we would be heard and that logic and reason should govern the world and our household. So she created Harriet Court as a solution to our shenanigans. My mom was two people at once.

We used to get the Hubba Bubba because it used to be strawberry or banana, and it was five pieces, so we got a pack of Lifesavers and either Chiclets or Hubba Bubba Bubblegum.

I don't love candy, like y'all love candy.

Me and Robin loved candy. We loved candy.

So take us through the candy case.

Well, me and Robin stole the candy from the corner store.

So me and Sean thought y'all found some money and bought that candy.

No, we stole the candy. We stole the candy, but we kept stealing it, and stealing it was so much candy. It was like Halloween candy. I'm talking about, like bags you would get and take from your kids at Halloween. That's how much candy it was.

Robin and Kamalita put me on retainer as their defense attorney. in exchange for them doing one of my household chores. We gathered in the den, which we called the middle room, where Chief Justice Dorothy Harriet presided. She would sit in the canary yellow Lazy Boy, and we'd plead our case from the couch-slash-witness box. We swore each other in on a copy of our favorite book, Encyclopedia Brown was mine, and I came up with a defense that I still argue should have worked, because, remember, we weren't allowed to eat candy.

No, no, no, we was eating that candy. I knew y'all was eating it.

But that was my defense. I don't remember exactly, but Mom would have cross-examined Kamalita and Robin. She probably asked them if they understood why we couldn't have candy. It was because I had ADHD, which my mom believed got worse with sugar. After we'd made our arguments, our mom dismissed Harriet Court by saying, OK, make good choices.

Oh, my God.

Like the world was going to come to an end, like it was anything. It might be the next day. It might be the same night. You didn't know what was going to happen. You would just take the paper and it'd be folded up, and you'd have to read your decision.

You're right, like she didn't never consult with anybody else.

She didn't consult with anybody, no appeals. It was what she said, was it.

Sentences were usually something like a week of extra chores or two weeks in solitary bedroom confinement, which happened so frequently. it eventually became known as being one punishment. And because we didn't go to school and only had each other to play with, those, in-room incarceration periods seemed unbearably long. And that was the point. The punishment gave you time to learn from your mistakes.

We were on punishment a long time. But it didn't matter with me and Robin, because we used to always, like, do what we wasn't supposed to do anyway. Mama was at work, so me and Robin would do whatever we wanted to do up until we knew it was time for her to come home. So it really didn't matter.

Kamalita didn't stop misbehaving. I can just see her, sitting in her room, thinking over the lessons she learned from the Candy case. Find a better hiding spot. So maybe it wasn't the perfect criminal justice system.

I think I might have been in 5th or 6th grade, and I went to the school, and I told them I was dying.

I forgot about that!

Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. I told them I was dying, and I had this, um, undetermined disease that nobody knew about. And literally, the whole grade was like, oh my goodness, she's dying, they don't know how much time she's going to have. So they would come in, sign my desk, and, like, do all that stuff. So even the teachers, they was, like, feeling bad.

Sean's classmates raised money for her unnamed terminal illness, and even signed a huge poster that was supposed to go in her casket. She kept this lie going for months, until my mom found out about it.

I think it was, like, parent-teacher conference or something. And so my mom went, and the teacher was just expressing, you know, how she was feeling bad and asking about everything that was going on. She even showed her, you know, how I had the people signing on my desk and everything. And, oh boy, when she got home, she actually was like, when you supposed to be dying? And then I just kind of, you know how you, like, lose your breath?

Lying was a big deal in our house. We weren't even allowed to say the word lie. Sean called for a Harriet Court trial, but really, it was just a delay tactic. She knew she didn't have a case. She was just trying to buy time, hoping my mom would cool off.

It was a culture shock for us. Totally different school, totally different neighborhood. I mean, predominantly white people, like, literally. I didn't have a lot of friends. I only had, like, maybe three or four friends, like I really did.

Looking back, I can't say that Harriet Court worked in this instance. Sean was lonely and she needed attention, so she acted out by telling a lie. My mom punished her for the lie, but it didn't help her make friends. Like the real-world criminal justice system, Harriet Court didn't address the root cause of the problem it was trying to fix.

So, I was the person that had to, like, wash the clothes. I would wash the clothes and the other girls would, like, either put them in the dryer or hang them out, or whatever needed to be done to them. And, like, he, didn't do anything except empty the trash.

When he was talking, I had to do the yards. I had to lift all the stuff in the house.

Like, I was that, though. How often was that? That was not that often. That was not that often.

Sean always felt like I wasn't doing enough. And, as the person whose sisters nicknamed him the absent-minded professor, I was the only sibling who regularly forgot to give her my clothes. One day, she finally reached the tipping point and exacted her revenge.

I literally was like, I'm not washing your clothes anymore. I'm like, I'm not doing it anymore. And I washed everybody's clothes except his that week.

But the next day was picture day. I think you left that important detail out. It was picture day. I was furious. Sean's petty vengeance meant I wouldn't have my favorite shirt on one of the most important events on the elementary school calendar.

So we would like get our clothes out at night. For some reason, that particular night, I didn't get my clothes out. And then, when I went to really go get my clothes out, and it was like syrup all over my clothes, like in the drawer.

I had snuck into her room with a bottle of cane patch syrup and poured it all over her clothes. Of course she was upset, but this was all part of my plan. Now that we were both without clothes for picture day, there was only one place we could settle our differences. Harriet Court.

She was like, well, since you got to wash clothes anyway, you might as well wash his clothes, since you got to wash them anyway. So I was like, I literally had to wash all my clothes over, plus his clothes. And he was the one to put the syrup on my clothes.

Sean had to pay for a crime that I committed while I escaped without punishment. In the moment when I won, I felt great. I ran around the middle room gloating about my superior legal skills. But when I went to my bedroom afterwards, which was next to the laundry room, I could hear her sobbing to herself as she tossed those clothes in the washing machine. I felt terrible.

My secret ambition was to go to law school. Even now, today, my favorite TV show is Judge Judy. I watch Judge Judy. I watch Trish.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Jewelry, my mom, the Honorable Dorothy Harriet.

We used to watch People's Court. Y'all had to watch People's Court because I watched it all the time. And I can't remember that judge's name.

Judge Wapner. Joe Wapner. Judge Joe Wapner.

But those are my favorite shows. even today. I should have gone to law school. I didn't, because I didn't think I could pass the LSAT. I probably could have, but I was just afraid to take it.

My mother says, honestly, for her, Harriet Court was partly for her own enjoyment. She loved arguing with me. Although, she told me, I wasn't the young legal eagle I remembered. Which stung. In my head, I thought I was one of the most persuasive attorneys.

Most of the time, yes. Because I had already thought about it. Whatever we were judging and whatever we were going to court for. So, our arguments didn't sway you at all? No, because I had already made up my mind that y'all didn't have no cootin', no do-right in y'all.

Did you think it made us better behaved, worse behaved, or no change?

I don't think it really made a difference with y'all. Y'all were just bad. Nobody could come up with the things that y'all did. Y'all were just some bad children. To be honest, today y'all still them.

Come to think of it, my sisters and I never really changed that much. Kamalita is still the most rebellious. Sean is still the snitch. who will tell mom, you know, that's whiskey in Mikey's cup. And me, I'm still the same.

I created that atmosphere on purpose. I wanted you guys to know how to stand your own ground and to be honest about who you were and what you were doing. And I think I made that point. The court made that point. It taught you guys loyalty to each other and the fact that y'all didn't snitch on each other and y'all still don't snitch on each other.

Talking to her, I realized that Harriet Court was not some genius institution that fit perfectly into my mom's master plan. Like most parents, she was just making it up as she went along. But to us, my mom tried this amazingly ambitious thing. Because of it, we still have this almost unreasonable faith in logic and justice. And whenever we talk, our conversations end the exact same way.

Coming up, a thief steals something very rare to build a spaceship. That's in a minute on Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Kaveh Zahedi had just moved to San Francisco. He hadn't even really moved there yet. He'd just driven there with a car full of stuff, crashed at a friend's house while he looked for an apartment. He didn't have a permit to park in his friend's neighborhood, which meant he had to move his car every two hours.

So I would have to go every day, every two hours, and move the car.

He does this all day, every day. It's extremely annoying, but he's diligent about it. And then one day, he comes out to find a parking ticket tucked under his windshield, wiper.

I remember, I was like, what the fuck? I just, I moved it. It's been less than two hours. This is wrong. I didn't do anything wrong.

It was an expensive ticket, around $300.

So I go to the court, and I explain to the judge what happened. And she says, how far did you move it? I said, I don't know, maybe like 30 feet? I'm just guessing. I don't even know what 30 feet looks like.

Kaveh was upset. He turned to leave.

And I just couldn't accept defeat like that without saying anything. Like, I wanted her to feel at least bad about it. Or at least, you know, I just wanted to put some doubt in her mind that she may have been wrong.

This is the kind of person Kaveh is. When he sees something in the world that seems wrong or ill-conceived or unfair, it's very hard for him not to point it out. This is either a strength or a personality defect. He sees it as both. Kaveh majored in philosophy, still reads it sometimes.

And I said, well, the legalists believe in applying the letter of the law. And the essentialists believe in the spirit of the law.

Did you think that would work?

I always think that people can be persuaded of something that makes sense.

But if I'm a judge and some guy starts talking to me about the nuances in Chinese philosophy, I feel like I'd be like, I'm going to double that guy's fine.

Well, she didn't double it. But she certainly didn't, you know, cancel it.

You still had to pay.

Yeah, yeah, I paid.

This all happened years ago. It turns out. the fine Cave had to pay was smaller than he remembers, and the number of feet for parking was larger. But the spirit of the story remains the same. Anyway, Cave finally gets an apartment of his own and a parking permit for his car, so he doesn't have to move it every two hours anymore.

And sometimes you are just circling the street, like, for half an hour or an hour. And it's late at night, you know, and you can't find a spot, and you're tired, and you're angry, and you're hungry, and you're just like, ugh. And so sometimes you're just desperate, so you'll park somewhere. that's kind of like borderline, illegal. So I did that.

Why? You actually did something wrong this time.

I know. But it was so much money, and it was so close, I don't know. I just, I contested it.

What were you imagining your argument would be? Because you can't do the spirit of the law, letter of the law thing in this case.

I don't know what I was thinking. I thought maybe, I don't know, it makes no sense. But I contested it.

That's unbelievable.

That a person can be persuaded by another person?

Kind of. Like, how often do people change their minds? Almost never.

Yeah, that's true. That's sad.

What was your reaction?

Well, I was delighted.

Seriously, all across the world, on any given day, how many people actually take the time to listen to what a complete stranger has to say, consider it, change their mind, and then admit to it? Hardly ever. And the fact that this doesn't happen. more often, that's a crime. And not a minor one.

Aviva de Kornfeld. Kaveh Zahedi told this story on his podcast, 365 Stories. I Want to Tell You Before We Both Die.

In the elementary school where I teach, there are Legos that are very valuable, and Legos no one gives a shit about.

That's it. Thank you.

Michaela Bly lives in Portland, Maine.

Todd and Amy live in a house in New Jersey. It's an old house. And one day, they notice they've got a plumbing problem. There's liquid pooling in this hole in their basement floor, around a sewage pipe. They call a plumber, who snakes the drain and charges them $500..

We had the plumber come again. And two times in just over three weeks,

Like, pee.

Now.

Is that basement floor?

That's Ryan, twin number one. They're all sitting on a navy blue sectional. Todd keeps calmly laying out the facts. Yes, they think there's pee on the basement floor.

Yeah, like, in that little recess. In that little, like, hole in the floor. Who's peeing in the hole? Not me.

The one who just said, not me, that's Hugh, the little one. Lawrence, twin number two, hasn't said anything yet. He's quiet, with a blank expression on his face. Then Ryan asks a question.

Can I just say something? Yes.

Whenever Macy pees in the work,

she always does it in the basement.

He wants to know if it's possible that the dog did it.

So, it is entirely possible. My question to any of you.

is, have any of you ever gone and just peed in that hole in the basement? No! That's disgusting! Hugh! You swear?

That I promised there? That's Lawrence, the quiet twin. He breaks his silence. So now, all three children have denied peeing in the hole. Their dad tries to explain to the kids.

It would not be good.

And I would not be happy. But it would be preferable that if someone is doing this, that you're honest.

Because the other explanation is

that we have a bad sewage problem.

that no one can explain. So, it's actually better if someone just says,

yes, it was me.

It was an accident. I did it twice.

Because then, at least,

we're not crazy. And we don't have to have a plumber come again.

Because we already spent a lot of money trying to figure out what's going on.

It was me. It was me, Brian says. But then, it turns out, he was just trying to get the interrogation over with.

I didn't pee in there, but can I just say that?

No, that doesn't help.

If you're lying, that doesn't help.

We just want you guys to be honest, okay?

Just tell us. I am being honest. I am.

Okay, let's go one by one.

They ask every child, again, starting with twin number one, Ryan.

Have you peed in that space? Okay, here's another question.

We're talking about now.

There was this weekend and three weeks ago.

I never peed.

Okay, did you see anybody of your brothers do it?

I never saw anybody pee. Okay, next.

Next, Hugh, the youngest. He's been fidgeting with a rainbow bookmark, fanning himself with it.

It was not me.

Did you see anybody do it?

No.

And you didn't do it?

Yes.

You swear?

Yes.

Finally, Lawrence, twin, number two. He answers the question with the directness of a politician caught up in a scandal.

I did not pee in the hole. Okay. Okay,

we're going to go down to the police department because they have a lie detector test.

Okay.

Everyone's good? That sounds fun.

The twins, Ryan and Lawrence, are in. But Hugh, the little one, lets out a nervous giggle.

So before we go to the police department,

can anyone just tell the truth?

Okay. Fine.

Hugh shoots his hand in the air. His eyes are wide and he's smiling.

Did you do it? Wait, really?

Are you telling the truth?

Yes, I'm actually doing it. Did you actually pee? Yes, I did, I did. How many times? Once.

How many times?

Only once.

Because somebody, it had to have happened more than one time.

Okay, then I probably did it like three times. Why? I don't know, because I need to go so bad. In one time, I need to go so bad.

Why did you just go to the bathroom?

Because I was like so far away from the bathroom.

Listeners, there is a bathroom in the basement. There are 25 steps that separate the bathroom from the play area. Maybe a few more if your legs are short.

How many times did you do it again? So you peed down that hole. Three times.

In the basement.

Are you crying?

Oh, God. A little bit.

You were taking $500 out of your bank account.

Well, I don't even have any. Then you're going to have zero money. Just forget it, okay?

Case closed. Court adjourned.

Bethel Hopday is an editor at our show.

A friend I know was biking to work. He noticed something really untoward. Ahead. he saw a total jerk who had done something totally absurd. A piece of tape that covered his plate.

Today's program was produced by Aviva de Kornfeld. The people who put together today's show include

I don't even know what 30 feet looks like.

I'm, Aaron Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. The cops call it criminal mischief.

It's the public's veil to fang. It's the public's veil to fang.

All right, guys, take us home.

Cops call it criminal mischief.

Cops call it criminal mischief.