BROOKLYN, NY - The arrest of yet another “unauthorized vendor” in a New York City subway station has caused outrage with many criticizing the police for unnecessarily harassing an old man just trying to make a living. The man, identified as David M. Solomon, Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs, was taken into custody on Wednesday for illegally selling shares in a state-run Malaysian investment fund on the Broadway Junction station in Brooklyn.
A video of the incident filmed by a bystander is causing outrage against the authorities a week after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered the deployment of 500 extra police officers to tackle a rise in crime on the Subway. However, the officers who arrested Mr. Solomon were in fact from the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission, unaffiliated with Mr. Cuomo’s recent decision. In the now-viral video, officers told Solomon that it was illegal to sell shares of the $6 billion sovereign wealth fund known as 1MDB that had been secured by brides and extortion by bankers in Goldman Sachs’ Asia office.
The officers eventually handcuffed the Mr. Solomon and dragged his trading terminal up a flight of stairs, but after the video surfaced lawmakers and community activists immediately spoke out against the officers’ actions. “This type of over-policing is frankly a waste of resources,” said local commuter Alice Mosley, “they should be going after the real criminals like people who sell churros or eat on the platform, not billionaire financiers.”