By far the most common summons handed out by the NYPD is for drinking alcohol in public [PDF]. Unsurprisingly, spitting doesn't crack the 20 most frequent offenses. Yet at least two police officers in Brownsville are seemingly offended enough by expectoration to make writing summonses for spitting a priority.

A man standing outside the Sutter Av-Rutland Road 3 train station films a glob of spit and the two officers who are writing him a violation for it.

"What is it, a violation?" he asks.

"A violation, exactly," one officer replies.

When the man asks the officer where he spits, the officer replies, "Trashcan, man."

"Just because you did nothing all day on the block don't mean that you gotta give me a summons because you need to go back to the station to make your quota, you feel me?" the man says, adding, "Spitting is my crime? How many people have you locked up for spitting?"

Put another way: how many white people have they locked up for spitting?

The incident occurred on the border of the 73rd and 67th Precincts; in 2011 at the height of the stop and frisk era, officers in the 73rd Precinct [PDF] made 25,167 stops, the second-highest of any neighborhood in the city (the first was the 75th in East New York).

Spitting is a health code violation that carries a $25 fine, the same amount as a ticket for having an open container; 38% of all summonses go unaddressed and result in a warrant for the offender's arrest. The mayor just announced several reforms to the summonsing system, including online payment for penalities, "a wider window within which to satisfy the summons," and a "reminder system."

"Loose cigarette enforcement is a lunatic mission, that no cop ever joined the NYPD to be part of," John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former NYPD officer Eugene O'Donnell told us several months ago. One wonders how many cops signed up to write tickets for spitting.