A man with Multiple Sclerosis saw his wife’s car ticketed while she picked him up from physical therapy on Bruckner Boulevard. The couple receiving the summons said this is just the latest questionable ticket written by traffic agents working in Throggs Neck.
Joan Capezuti was waiting for her husband Charles to come out of his physical therapy session at Proactive Physical and Hand Therapy at 2904 Bruckner Boulevard near E. Tremont Avenue. She was slapped with a summons for standing in a bus stop, on Wednesday, September 22, as he exited the building.
While it is not against the law to pick up or discharge passengers in a bus stop, and Capezuti had a handicapped parking placard on her dashboard, the traffic agent nevertheless issued a summons for “no standing,” before her husband could maneuver his way out of PT with his walker.
“Charles was in Proactive getting ready to come out, when out of nowhere a traffic agent comes up to my car and gives me a ticket – without warning,” Joan said. “I told her that I was waiting for my husband to come out of therapy, and that he has trouble walking, but she said she didn’t care.”
Charles always uses a cane, and often uses a walker, since he had a flair-up of Multiple Sclerosis in 2001 and had to leave his job as a banker with Chase Manhattan to attend to his health.
While regular physical therapy has helped Charles, he still finds walking difficult, and takes a few minutes to enter and exit a car, even if it is waiting for him.
“My balance is really shot and I cannot walk very well,” he said. “In my house, I am in a wheelchair. The reason I am going to therapy is to work on my balance. I have really limited feeling in my feet.”
Capezuti said that he plans on fighting the ticket because he thinks that the traffic agent didn’t have a full enough understanding of his disability and the need for his wife to pick him up in the bus stop.
“I really don’t have any intention of paying the ticket at this point,” Charles stated. “I am going to fight the ticket for my wife and push it to the limit. I will take it into court if I have to, and go there in a wheelchair because I think other people [with disabilities] are having similar issues.”
