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.