MTA chairman Janno Lieber on Monday defended the agency’s police department for cuffing and removing The Bear screenwriter Alex O’Keefe from a Metro-North train for allegedly keeping his feet up on the seats.
O’Keefe, who is black, posted a video showing two MTAPD officers removing him from a train after a white woman “said she didn’t like the way I was sitting,” he alleged.
Lieber acknowledged he hadn’t seen the video, which as of late Monday had gone viral on multiple social media platforms. But Lieber put the blame for the incident on O’Keefe’s apparent decision not to put his feet down.
“If you’re putting your feet on the seats, you’re breaking the rules of our commuter railroad and of the subways of the whole MTA,” Lieber told reporters Monday when asked about the incident. “This is our public square, we have to be courteous of each other.”
“The police have to get involved because somebody won’t take his feet off the seat?” Lieber added. “That already, to me, is already a situation that the person who did that ought to reconsider why they’re delaying people, why they have to get the cops involved — just take your feet off the seat.”
The viral video begins as two MTA police officers have already arrived; it’s not clear if there had been any efforts from either side to de-escalate the situation when O’Keefe begins filming.
“You’re going to arrest the one black dude on the train because this white woman said she didn’t like the way I was sitting on the train?” O’Keefe asks as the video begins, pointing to an older white woman sitting one row ahead of him.
One officer begins cuffing O’Keefe as he says “I haven’t done anything illegal.” A second officer responds, “Let’s go.”
“I am sitting on the train and one white woman didn’t like my presence,” O’Keefe says.
When the second officer says something inaudible, O’Keefe responds, “resisting what? What are you trying to arrest me for?” The first officer responds, “You’re disorderly.”
The video ends shortly afterward.
Another video, posted by O’Keefe but shot by someone else, shows the screenwriter facing a wall, flanked by two officers while another two officers write him a ticket.
According to a statement from MTAPD, a Metro-North conductor reported O’Keefe around 10:25 a.m. Thursday after he “had refused to remove his feet” from an adjacent seat.
“Investigation, enhanced by body-worn cameras and on-board security camera video, revealed that a 31-year-old male was observed with both legs stretched across an adjacent seat,” the statement continued.
According to the statement, the transit cops then ordered O’Keefe to get off the train, and proceeded to cuff him when he refused.
MTAPD said the screenwriter was issued a summons for disorderly conduct and was not placed under arrest at any time.
