A writer for the popular television show “The Bear” was taken off an MTA train in handcuffs last week for manspreading, an incident he claims was racially motivated.
Alex O’Keefe was on a Connecticut-bound train last Thursday morning when the incident occurred. On Monday, O’Keefe shared video of the encounter with MTA police, blaming an “old white woman” for starring the trouble.
“I was arrested on the @MTA train to Connecticut today, pulled off, handcuffed, and detained,” O’Keefe wrote on Instagram. “An old white woman got on the train and immediately pointed at me and told me to correct how I was sitting. I refused so she went to the conductor and complained.”
O’Keefe also claimed that a friend of the “old Karen” who called him out at one point said “You’re not the minority anymore.” After police arrived, they asked O’Keefe to exit the train, but he refused and asked what he had done wrong.
“They said I was disturbing the peace by not leaving the train,” O’Keefe said. “They pulled me off the train and arrested me without even talking to the Karen who reported the one black person on the train. On the platform, the police detained me and interrogated me. Only black folks stayed nearby and recorded the arrest. When I demanded a lawyer and reminded them they didn’t even take a statement from the woman who complained they eventually released me. This country is growing more psycho by the day. What will you do about it?”
The MTA responds
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said in a statement that officers were called to a report of a disorderly person on train at the Fordham Metro-North station in The Bronx around 10:25 a.m. last Thursday.
“The train was en route from Grand Central Terminal to New Haven, when a conductor reported a passenger occupying two seats had refused to remove his feet from one of the seats,” the spokesperson said, via the New York Post.
“Investigation, enhanced by body-worn cameras and on-board security camera video, revealed that a 31 year-old male was observed with both legs stretched across an adjacent seat.”
Additionally, the spokesperson said O’Keefe, who is known as a speechwriter for prominent Democrat politicians in addition to his screenwriting work, was never arrested at any time and was escorted off the train in handcuffs when he refused to exit on his own accord.
“When he continued to refuse to exit, delaying service for several hundred other riders for six minutes, the passenger involved was handcuffed and removed from the train,” the rep said.
