Cops Pull Over Woman for Biking in Skirt: Is This a Legit Reason to Stop Someone?

We just bought a ticket to Old Amsterdam where, if Dutch tourist Jasmijn Rijcken and the New York Daily News are to be believed, women mount bicycles and buzz around town wearing aged leather jackets (indicating a chill) and cocktail napkin skirts (indicating something else).

Whilst in New York City on May 3 for the New Amsterdam Bike show, Rijcken (pronunciation unknown) was allegedly pulled over by a NYPD officer in Soho because her skirt was too short for decent bike riding.



Seriously?

“He said it's very disturbing, and it's distracting the cars and it's dangerous,” Rijcken told the Daily News. “I thought he was joking around but he got angry and asked me for ID.”

Perhaps the officer had just finished watching a "Seinfeld" rerun, in which a voluptuous woman dons nothing but a bra on the sidewalk, the tail-wagging distraction of which leads to various commuter accidents.

Happily, no deaths due to Rijcken’s skirt were reported.

“I didn't even think for one second that my outfit could be harmful or disturbing,” she said, adding that, after her chat with the peeved officer, she went back to her hotel and put on more suitable attire – at least for the wide, stubby, pasty legs of Americans.

Pants.

“I didn't want to get into trouble again,” the Dutch national said.

Rijcken could not recall the officer’s name for the Daily News.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne responded: “Whether this story bears even a modest semblance of what actually occurred is impossible to establish without being provided the purported officer's name and getting his side of the story.”