New York City’s top traffic agent is a relentless, ruthless street-sweeper who slings summonses at a rate of one every 9 minutes, 45 seconds.
South Brooklyn’s orange tsunami, Arnous Morin, 53, wrote nearly 19,000 parking tickets in fiscal year 2015, an average of 76 per day he worked, city records analyzed by The Post and AAA Northeast show.
The one-man ticket blitz dished out 4,000 more summonses than the city’s No. 2 traffic cop.
And Morin’s base pay of $36,000 was eclipsed 33 times over by the amount of fines he generated for city coffers — $1.2 million.
Morin, who was a Catholic-school principal in his native Haiti, is unapologetic about his lack of mercy for motorists.
“Never, never. It’s never OK to break the law,” he told The Post at his Canarsie home. “The law is hard, but it’s the law. You can’t break the law for any reason.”
Morin relentlessly scans for alternate-side scofflaws from his white NYPD Toyota Prius. In fact, 54 percent of the 18,953 violations he wrote were for drivers not moving their cars during street-cleaning hours.
He begins work at 7 a.m., slipping through the side streets of Sunset Park, Park Slope, Bay Ridge and Coney Island.
“I have the whole of Brooklyn South in my head,” he said.
“I’m a traffic agent in my blood. Even on vacation in my personal car, I see violations — look at this car in front of a fire hydrant, look at this car double-parked, look at this car in a no-standing!”
Morin says he observes the city rule granting a five-minute grace period and sometimes will give a motorist “even a little more time to move.”
“You have to give people courtesy,” he said. “If the motorist is there, you have to ask them to move first.”
But when time expires, his pen knows no clemency.
He wins high praise from his union bosses.
“He’s a very hardworking person, a man of integrity and sincerity,” said Syed Rahim, president of Communication Workers of America Local 1182. “He works sometimes 12 hours a day, six to seven days to survive. He is the exception. I appreciate him.”
Drivers aren’t so laudatory.
Some yell that he should “get a real job,” Morin said. “They think they are never at fault.”
“I’m a quiet man,” he added. “I’m not going to fight with anybody. I don’t like conflict. I don’t like drama. If someone curses at me, I walk away. You do your work, you do it quietly, and you go home safe.”
Lawyers who fight traffic tickets are wary of Morin’s superhuman production.
“It sounds to me like he’s trying to make his bones,” said attorney Barry Jacobson. “Parking tickets are purely a revenue-raising activity.”
Brooklyn traffic attorney Scott Forschein said: “It’s shocking that one person would stand out so much ahead of anyone else. I’d be concerned about the validity of tickets given out at that rate.”
But Morin said his ticket-dismissal rate is “very low.” The city Finance Department and the NYPD declined to comment on his stats.
Born in rural southern Haiti, Morin earned a civil-engineering degree in Port-Au-Prince. He became a teacher at age 19.
‘It sounds to me like he’s trying to make his bones.Parking tickets are purely a revenue-raising activity.’
- attorney, Barry Jacobson
Scared by the violence that followed the coup ousting President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, he moved his wife and four kids to Brooklyn in 2005 and joined them a year later. (He became a US citizen six months ago.)
Morin wanted to continue teaching, but the city required two years of graduate school and certification. He became a parking attendant near Central Park instead.
“When you come to America, you have to get something, the first thing you find until you get something better,” he said.
A friend suggested he apply to be a traffic agent. He passed the exam in 2009.
Morin joined a foot-patrol unit in Brooklyn South. His first year was so grueling that he sometimes had to soak his swollen feet after a shift. He vowed to work hard enough to get promoted — and be given a car.
When his first full year as a traffic cop ended, Morin’s supervisor told him he was the “No. 1 foot [agent] in the city.”
Now, tooling around in his prized Prius, he has been the top traffic cop in the city for two years running and has won awards for his efforts. He also earned $63,793 last year, thanks to lots of overtime.
Morin, who confesses to being ticketed three times himself, gives this advice to New Yorkers: “Most of the tickets are because people don’t read the signs. Read the signs!”