National
Review Online
Tuesday,
May 23, 2023
When Sarah
Comrie prepared to bike home after completing her twelve-hour shift at Bellevue
Hospital while six months pregnant, she could hardly have expected that within
days she would become an infamous supervillain, and that she’d be placed on
leave from her job. But in this era of viral outrage, that’s exactly what
happened.
For
those who haven’t seen it, last week a video exploded on social media showing
Comrie and a young man struggling over a Citi Bike that both had claimed to
have rented. (Citi Bike is New York City’s public bike-rental service.) In the
video, Comrie yells for help, cries, and complains that the young man trying to
grab the bike from her hit her unborn child. She is heckled by a group of men
surrounding her, who accuse her of fake crying, and joke that “her baby gonna
come out retarded.” The group intimidates her into switching to another bike.
Given
that Comrie is white and the young man she was struggling with is black, it
didn’t take long for the video to spread and get processed through our nation’s
toxic racial discourse. Without anything to go on but the video, attorney and
race hustler Benjamin Crump tweeted, “A white woman was caught on
camera attempting to STEAL a Citi Bike from a young Black man in NYC. She
grossly tried to weaponize her tears to paint this man as a threat. This is
EXACTLY the type of behavior that has endangered so many Black men in the
past!” As the video was viewed millions of times, Comrie became known as “Citi
Bike Karen” and was branded a white supremacist and even likened, by one
commentator, to the white woman whose accusations led to the 1955 lynching of
Emmett Till.
Instead
of standing by its employee — or, at the minimum, awaiting more facts — NYC
Health + Hospitals, which operates Bellevue and all other public hospitals in
the city, swiftly caved. Calling the video “disturbing,” the hospital network
announced in a statement that “the provider is currently out
on leave and will remain on leave pending a review.”
This is
a disgraceful overreaction. Based purely on the short video, there is no
evidence that Comrie did anything wrong. And now, we have actual evidence that
points in the other direction. A lawyer for Comrie has shown receipts to
several media outlets demonstrating that Comrie took out the bike in question,
at the time in question, for one minute — which would be consistent with the
elapsed time on the video. (The bike’s serial number, visible on freeze-frame
in the video, matches the number on the receipts.) Presumably, Comrie would
have been willing to share the evidence with her employer, which assuming it is
as has been described, should be exonerating. The fact that she was placed on
leave means hospital administrators either never gave her a chance to provide
her side of the story, or they saw the evidence and caved in to the mob anyway.
Either picture is not flattering. By failing to stand by her, Bellevue and its
parent made her a more vulnerable target, only further encouraging the mob.
Comrie is now in hiding in the face of death threats,
according to her lawyer.
It is unclear
how directly involved Mitchell H. Katz, the president and CEO of NYC Health +
Hospitals, was in the decision to place Comrie on leave. But either way, he
should intervene at this point to immediately reinstate her with an apology.
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