DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE

Defending The Indefensible

Perhaps James Huntley, president of Communications Workers of America Local 1182, deserves the benefit of the doubt for his fierce defense of the four Traffic Enforcement Agents who were arrested last week for allegedly writing bogus parking tickets. It could be argued that he was merely fulfilling his institutional role in contending that the four TEAs should not be condemned until they are proven guilty in court.

But it seems to us that in going beyond his basic obligation of securing legal representation for the four accused men, Mr. Huntley was forgetting the bigger picture.

TEAs have long suffered from a lack of respect among the general public, and although they are employees of the NYPD, the fact that they don't carry guns has made them targets of abuse - sometimes physical - from irate motorists whom they have justifiably ticketed.

The last thing Mr. Huntley's members needed was for four colleagues to be charged by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office - after an investigation launched by the NYPD - with creating tickets out of thin air because they were too lazy to do their jobs properly. Mr. Huntley's claim in their behalf - that even if they were guilty as charged, it was not as if they had taken bribes or shaken down motorists - seeks to minimize what under any circumstances is an egregious breach of their duties as TEAs.

The four accused men allegedly targeted cars with out-of-state license plates from the belief that those drivers were less likely to contest the summonses. They figured wrong; it was due to motorist complaints that the NYPD launched the probe.

Mr. Huntley would have been better advised to emphasize in his public comments that the overwhelming majority of his members are conscientious, hard-working civil servants, and that allegations that a few of them had behaved in the opposite fashion should not obscure that fact.