Alex O’Keefe, a staff writer on the Emmy-winning first season of The Bear, was handcuffed and removed from a Metro-North train on Thursday last week. A spokesperson for the MTA told The Cut in an emailed statement that its police officers responded to reports of a “disorderly passenger” on a train heading from New York’s Grand Central Terminal to New Haven, Connecticut. But according to an Instagram caption O’Keefe posted that day, the “disorderly” behavior in question was the position in which he, a Black man, was sitting. “An old white woman got on the train and immediately pointed at me and told me to correct how I was sitting,” O’Keefe wrote, accompanied by a video he filmed of the incident. “I refused so she went to the conductor and complained.”
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O’Keefe wrote that while “waiting for the police to arrive,” the woman’s friend said to him, “You’re not the minority anymore.” O’Keefe continued, “The police told me to leave the train, I refused and asked what was I doing illegally. They said I was disturbing the peace by not leaving the train. They pulled me off the train and arrested me without even talking to the Karen who reported the one black person on the train. On the platform, the police detained me and interrogated me. Only black folks stayed nearby and recorded the arrest.”
In the video O’Keefe filmed while police removed him from the train, he can be heard saying, “You called the police to arrest the one Black dude on the train,” and repeating, “I haven’t done anything illegal.” In addition to that video, O’Keefe posted an image of the white woman who allegedly reported him to the conductor and a video taken by fellow passengers who stayed on the platform to record four officers handcuffing O’Keefe.
According to the MTA’s statement issued to The Cut, a passenger had reported O’Keefe because he was “occupying two seats” and had “refused to remove his feet from one of the seats.” After officers boarded the train, the MTA claims O’Keefe refused to exit, delaying the train’s departure by six minutes. Officers then issued O’Keefe a summons for disorderly conduct before allowing him to board the next train. The MTA’s statement stressed that O’Keefe was detained but not arrested.
On Monday, MTA chairman Janno Lieber addressed the incident during a news conference after a reporter asked if “MTA police are getting enough deescalation training.” “I understand that second-guessing is part of what you, what the press do for a living,” Lieber said, noting he hadn’t seen the video of O’Keefe’s detainment. “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 … He shouldn’t do that.” Lieber added that his team would “take a look at the video and deal with all the dramas that seem to come out of these simple interactions these days.”
In an emailed statement to The Cut on Tuesday, O’Keefe said the MTA claimed to have completed an investigation into the incident but did not interview him or record his side of the story. The MTA/Metro-North Railroad Equal Opportunity Division (EOD) did, however, send O’Keefe a letter that he believes “implies misconduct.” “We regret the described incident that was reported,” the letter read. “Please note that it is not consistent with the agency’s high standards for courtesy and customer service.” For now, O’Keefe says, the MTA has not dropped his summons.
“Let’s be honest, a 31-year old white man in business casual would never be violently pulled off a train and detained because one customer deemed their sitting ‘disrespectful,’” O’Keefe told The Cut in his statement. “Sitting while Black is not illegal.”
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