The NYPD is cracking down on people they believe are reselling Apple’s newest gadgets. After several days of waiting in line for the iPhone 6 release, a Chinese woman was apprehended by the cops near the Fifth Avenue Apple store. She tells the Daily News that the officers fabricated the story.
Hui Lin, a 51-year-old mother of two who works in the Garment District, says she was buying iPhones for her family. Cops claim they saw her selling one of her just-purchased phones in the street. Lin told the Daily News, with the help of a Chinese interpreter, that an undercover cop approached her and asked, “How much?” She says she told him that she didn’t want to sell the phones, and was immediately arrested and taken to the Midtown South Precinct in a van with other suspects.
She said it took over seven hours for her to be released, and that she was deprived of her asthma medication and water. She also said she couldn’t understand what she’d been arrested for, and police didn’t provide her with a translator.
Eventually, Lin was given a desk appearance ticket for “operating as an unlicensed vendor.” She is due in court on October 18th.
Lin’s lawyer adds another unsettling detail to the story. Lin says she was arrested with 12 iPhones. Though there is a two-per-person limit, Lin and her husband took painful measures to obtain them, waiting for days in line. The cops “vouchered the phones as evidence — and only acknowledge having 10 of them.” The lawyer believes they may have held on to the other two.
A recent Casey Neistat’s video (originally titled “iPhone 6 Lines and the Chinese Mafia“) tried to create a narrative of a vast “black market” network of Chinese iPhone resellers. It mostly showed sad, tired Chinese people waiting at the front of the line in the street. Is also captured cops manhandling a confused, crying Chinese woman and shouting the following at someone in line: “You ever heard of soap? You fucking stink.”
(Screenshot: Casey Neistat)
