Friday, August 28, 2009

New York open water swimmers fined $250 becasue a lifeguard was not on duty!


This is so outrageous that you have to read it to believe it:

From the Gothamist:

Wednesday night a few Russian women were ticketed $250 a piece for swimming past 6 p.m. at Brighton Beach. The Parks security allegedly threatened to jail them and check up on their immigration statuses. While the Parks Dept. told us that "New York State law does not allow you to swim at your own risk," the swimmers (and eyewitnesses) say that the lifeguards never alerted them that the beach was closing, and simply clocked out without getting anyone out of the water.

[Link]

It's not this way in Los Angeles. You can swim anytime you want.

4 comments:

Rob D said...

Seriously? "New York State law does not allow you to swim at your own risk" Wow. I would think swimmers would be the least of New York's problems.

Tony Austin said...

Use a bikini, go to jail; that's the law!

Anonymous said...

Wrong, you can't swim anytime you want in many places. At Castaic Lake we were told that if we tried to swim in the lake before the lifeguards were on duty, we would be fined and arrested. This was when we were going to do a mini triathlon starting at 8am. Even if we were to provide our own lifeguards we could not do it since it might encourage others to use the lake's swimming areas without a lifeguard.

Anonymous said...

This probably is related to a rash of drownings off NYC beaches (yes, NYC has beaches!)due to rip currents.