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Hilariously, the teenager at the center of Citi Bike incident (named Michael in this article) inadvertently revealed even MORE wrongdoing in an attempt to defend his actions.
https://newsone.com/4592993/sarah-jane-comrie-update-citi-bike-teens-mother-speaks-out/
The teen's family are immigrants from West Africa.
Because they receive welfare, they get discounted rates for Citi Bike rides in 45 minute increments.
Additionally, only some of the bikes in the Citi Bike program are electric.
After searching for these rare electric bikes, the teen and his friends rode them in 45 minute increments, docking them repeatedly to avoid the full rate kicking in.
Each time they docked the bikes, the teen's friends continued to sit on the bikes, so no one else could take the desirable and limited e-bikes.
However, Michael admits he wasn't sitting on the bike when nurse Comrie approached it.
As a pregnant woman trying to get home from work, Ms. Comrie obviously preferred an e-bike, and tried to take the one seemingly-available e-bike from the dock.
This is where the infamous recorded altercation begins.
Michael and his friends had no right to continue commandeering these e-bikes for later use.
They sat around and stopped anyone else from checking out these bikes for multiple periods of 15-30 minutes.
In an enormous city like NYC with constant demand, that's a very long time.
This defies the spirit of the bike program.
It significantly reduces capacity and undercuts the financial viability of the program.
These are also able-bodied teenagers appropriating scarce e-bikes for joy rides.
They aren't trying to get anywhere.
Throughout the article, the family keeps saying that the bike was “his.”
It was never “his” bike, especially after he docked it.
It's even less “his” since he was riding it through a taxpayer-subsidized program, which he admits to abusing further still.
The family are also upset that Comrie raised $130,000 for legal expenses:
“No one is helping us. We are poor people. We are immigrants. We can’t afford a lawyer.”
“She did something wrong, and she basically got rewarded for it. She’s made over $100,000”
This neglects that the family doesn't need a lawyer. They aren't yet faced with any legal repercussions for their actions.
Ms. Comrie is pregnant and unemployed. Her life is in shambles.
And, as pointed out already, this family already receives welfare.
The fact that the family shared these details as a defense of their son's actions, and feel that they have somehow been wronged when their lies got a pregnant woman unfairly fired is mind-boggling.
“Why couldn’t she just go and get a different bike?”
It's really amazing that these people lack the self-awareness to recognize that the pregnant nurse who just finished a 10-hour shift NEEDED the electric bike more than their teenage son on a joy ride.