An 83-year-old Upper East Sider says the Sanitation Department treated her like garbage.
Darbe Pitofsky claims she was chased, threatened with arrest and slapped with a $100 ticket -- all for throwing out her newspapers in a city trash can.
"I was so frightened," Pitofsky said of her bizarre early-morning run-in with a surly sanitation agent on June 25 near her East 71st Street apartment. "I was a nervous wreck."
Pitofsky, a retired model, was on her way to a nearby McDonald's for a cup of coffee at about 6:30 a.m., when she said she dropped the prior day's newspapers in a brown Bloomingdale's bag into the trash can.
She then saw somebody come charging up to her from a Sanitation Department car across the street. "I thought he was going to hit me," she recalled.
He demanded to know if she had thrown any trash into the can. When she replied yes, he went ballistic, she said.
"You know you can't do that! Give me your ID!" he yelled at her. The startled senior said she "froze" -- which just agitated the agent more.
"Give me your ID or I'm going to bring you in. I'm taking you in," he allegedly threatened.
"I thought he was going to put me in a cell," Pitofsky recalled.
She said she offered to go home and get her driver's license, and he followed her into the lobby.
When she returned, he demanded she go back to his car with him so he could write her a ticket. Pitofsky said she couldn't believe her eyes when she saw how much it was for.
"You want to make it $300?" the agent allegedly threatened.
"I said, 'Give it to me,' and I walked away," she recounted.
Pitofsky said she has already filed a complaint with Sanitation about the agent's attitude, and she plans to challenge the ticket. Her son, Sandy Pitofsky, said his mom can't afford the fine because she's on a fixed income.
"I'm outraged that somebody would actually threaten my mother with arrest for throwing trash in a trash can," he said. "For him to threaten someone with arrest is an abuse of power."
A rep for Sanitation said, "Corner baskets are for pedestrian use only," but added that Pitofsky can challenge the ticket administratively if she thinks there has been a mistake.
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