Putting the squeeze on NYC?

Like an awful dream from another century, the panhandler approached my car as I exited the Queens Midtown Tunnel, squeegee in hand.

Could it be? Were the squeegee men really back?

In the 1980s and into the early ’90s, New York City was a dangerous place. Jerry Seinfeld joked about cardboard signs on car windows that read, “No radio. It’s already been stolen,” and about his shirt inscribed, “Thanks for not killing me.”

But it was far from funny. Rudy Giuliani cracked down hard on crime as mayor, and his successor Mike Bloomberg maintained the new protocols Giuliani installed, including stop and frisk.

Crime plunged, but stop and frisk was abused, and too many innocent people harassed. When stop and frisk was virtually eliminated, many were surprised when crime rates remained low. But some now fear the pendulum may have swung too far the other way, with cash bail eliminated for misdemeanors and certain felonies.

The broken-windows theory of law enforcement, that stopping smaller crimes and anti-social behavior prevents bigger crimes, is out the window.

In 2020, “free transit” protesters jump turnstiles and vandalize the subway with impunity, chanting “No NYPD in the MTA” and cursing at cops.

And the squeegee men are back! If you weren’t around in the late 20th century you may think it’s no big deal. But drive into and around the city today — it may change your outlook. Particularly if you are caught at the light exiting the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. When a squeegee guy approaches your car. And you wave him off. And he ignores you and smears some dirty liquid across your clean windshield. And you refuse to give him money for that.

And he smashes the squeegee handle against your hood. As happened to me in the early 90s, and is happening to drivers again in 2020.

Call a cop, you say? Hey, don’t waste your time and theirs.

“We don’t even arrest people for [urinating] in the street anymore,” a police source told the New York Post. “Why would we arrest a squeegee guy?”

The car in front of me moves and I hit the accelerator, blocking Squeegee Man’s way. I can see him shaking his fist at me in my rearview mirror as I speed off. 

Follow playwright Mike Vogel at @mikewrite7.