This is part of an ongoing discussion with the 646Guy. It was simply too long to leave in the comments section on his site. So the rest of you can ignore it.

Okay, let's look at it this way.

The mayor's office wants to continue to crack down on quality of life offenses, but because of budget cuts, he's got a smaller force. So he tells the police commissioner, "We need the police to be more productive. There are fewer men, but we still need the city to be safe. Get them to give out more warnings, more tickets, don't let the criminals think that they can get away with anything if there is a smaller force" Police commissioner tells the officers.

Now most officers are probably cool with this, after all, many of them live here too. But a couple of them, we'll call Officer Laze Round and Officer Chris P. Creme don't like this at all. "What do they mean we have to work harder? We already do lots of work, too damn much if you ask me." So they complain to the PBA. "They're making us follow quotas."

The PBA calls the Daily News . . . "Psst, the Mayor wants quotas." Daily News, seeing a way to sell more papers, screams out "QUOTAS!!!!" They send out their reporters, "Find some stupid tickets, things that will make it look like the cops are giving tickets for anything at all." Then after they report a stupid ticket or two (or a ticket they make to sound stupid), they ask their readers for other examples. Everybody who's ever gotten a ticket that they consider unfair (and who has ever been "fairly" ticketed) then writes in. The News picks the best of the bunch. Then the PBA reads the News and says, "see, clearly there are quotas." And the News says "see, the PBA says there are quotas." And the Mayor says "look at the facts, tickets are down, we're giving out fewer than last year, and we're responding to the people's desire for a higher quality of life." To which the News and the PBA reply "Facts? Who needs facts? We have the vox populi, even if they're only repeating what we've told them."

And after all, if the people say it's true, then it must be true. Just ask Richard Gere.

This to me is all about sour grapes and warped perception. No one likes getting a ticket. And everyone has an excuse. How was I supposed to know . . . But I was only . . . You're only doing this because I'm . . . Everybody else does this . . .

Now imagine if the cops actually said okay every time someone made an excuse. Take for example the kids in your neighborhood who are too loud at 2 a.m. "But officer, we weren't being loud. That person who called you is just a crank." "Well, you look like nice kids. I'll let you go with a warning." You'd be livid.

Or if the ladies who were talking too loud were in your building's hallway. Or the girl sitting on the stairs had been blocking your path and refused to move.

If people really have a problem with this sort of thing, talk to your elected representatives. Tell the city council that you want it to be legal for people to sit out on milkcrates. Tell them you think it's about time people were allowed to loiter. Maybe make it legal to hold open subway doors. We should only have to recycle when it's convenient for us. If people want to block the stairs, then by God, they should be allowed to.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try to obey the law to the best of my ability and thank God that someone is cracking down on all the quality of life crimes.