Cops in New York are arresting subway riders for 'manspreading'

(Image credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

last updated 28 May 2015

New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority recently began a campaign to improve etiquette on the subway, plastering signs within carriages encouraging commuters to, for example, give their seats up for the elderly and disabled. One such sign tells men not to "manspread," i.e. sit with their legs spread so far apart that it disturbs other passengers. (It's a problem.)

But it appears a couple of zealous police officers took the MTA's tips a tad too far, arresting a pair of Latino men for manspreading. As Gothamist notes, the men were arrested after midnight, which makes it unlikely their alleged manspreading actually impinged on anyone's space.

Indeed, it's possible that the men were arrested so that the police could meet their quotas, a much criticized aspect of the city's so-called "broken windows" approach to policing, in which even minor crimes are aggressively prosecuted.