Add The New York Post on Google These Brooklyn cops made the mistake of pulling over and handing out bogus traffic tickets to the wrong reporter.
My driving drama began April 12, a bright Sunday afternoon, during a trip to the gym for a quick workout. I was rudely interrupted at Fourth Avenue and 86th Street in Bay Ridge by about a half-dozen young NYPD officers who said they pulled me over for a “random traffic-safety check.”
After making me wait 20 minutes, a female officer shlepped out of a police car and slapped me with two summonses. They were for having “illegal” dealership frames on the front and rear license plates of my 2019 Infiniti.
I was shocked. I actually laughed, and told her she must be misinterpreting the law.
I said I might not be a lawyer, but as a New York Post reporter, I am very familiar with new laws prohibiting drivers from using ghost plates, clear plastic coverings and other methods to block plates from being read by red light, speeding and toll cameras.
But not dealer frames, which do not obstruct the plates, and are probably on about half of all NYC vehicles. On the block where I was pulled over, there were a dozen cars with dealer frames, I pointed out.
Then I asked her — and a crew of other fresh-faced cops who began surrounding me like ticket-quota vultures — what made my situation any different.
The officers got hissy, said they weren’t going to debate, and one male cop threatened to give me another ticket if I didn’t just drive away.
So I did – straight to the 68th Precinct stationhouse a mile away.
I showed the ranking officer on duty both summonses – which were so sloppily scrawled that I could not make out the actual charges or potential fines.
He walked outside to check my license plates and admitted the tickets should never have been written.
He assured me the officers would be “retrained” because the law allows plate covers — provided, like mine, they don’t block numbers and letters on the plate.
He apologized but said he didn’t have the power to toss the tickets — which were about to cost me more than $300 in fines and surcharges.
On Friday, I finally had my day in court – a small hearing room at the state Department of Motor Vehicles office in Coney Island before an associate administrative law judge.
I was still angry about these petty and unfair tickets — and was ready to channel my inner Harvey Specter, the fictional lawyer from “Suits.”
I was up late the night before, vigilantly rehearsing what would be a spirited defense, complete with evidentiary photos and statutory citations.
The officer, Tiffany Ruiz, showed up in uniform wearing sunglasses, but removed them shortly before the two of us were called up to address Judge Perry Bohmstein.
Ruiz, an NYPD cop since 2024 who records show pocketed $77,228 with overtime last year, went first and flat-out lied — or had a memory fart.
She claimed my plates were “dirty and covered by plastic” – never mentioning our debate over the legality of dealership frames.
While the plates’ cleanliness was open to interpretation, the idea that I ever had transparent plastic plate covers – like the ones many of her fellow cops have infamously used on their private cars for years to avoid camera tickets – was not true.
But Bohmstein stopped the officer in the middle of her testimony — dismissing both tickets on the spot.
I was thrilled — yet sad. I blurted out that I had a whole case prepared.
“You don’t get to make the speech now!” the cranky, but obviously fair, judge barked, before warning me to leave immediately before he changed his mind.
So I did, but nobody was going to stop me from confronting Ruiz outside the trial room.
I asked her why she lied about me having a plastic cover on my plates.
I also asked if she was ever retrained on what constitutes an obstructed plate, as her superior promised.
So I left, but not before advising her to pick up the Sunday Post.
