Hey, they had it coming.
Self-appointed Long Island Rail Road etiquette enforcer John Clifford went on trial in Manhattan yesterday for misdemeanor assault and harassment – charged with screaming curses at one passenger for talking too loud on his cellphone, and then slapping a female passenger’s hand, twice, when she interceded.
“I said “f – – – ing faggot,” and that shut him up,” admitted the ex-cop-turned-lawyer, who has a string of eight arrests for allegedly launching into coffee-tossing, punch-throwing, expletive-spewing attacks on commuters who dared disturb his repose along the Long Beach-to-Penn Station line.
In yesterday’s case – involving the only charge that’s ever stuck to him – the 6-foot-4 Clifford, 60, insisted that a petite, 50-something financial evaluator named Lydia Klein refused to mind her own business as she headed to her Midtown job, and had struck him first.
“I thought she might slap me again,” he told a judge in opening statements.
Acting as his own lawyer in Manhattan Criminal Court, Clifford denied nothing about the March 2007 commute from hell – not the cursing, the insults or the slapping.
Commuter Nicholas Bender – scheduled to testify today – had started it all, Clifford told a reporter outside court. Clifford, on the other hand, had just wanted to read his newspaper and drink his coffee.
“I shouldn’t have to put up with some 19-year-old nitwit waking up one girlfriend after another,” on his cellphone, he claimed of Bender.
“I have as much right telling this guy he’s being an a – – hole as he has a right being one.”
But in court, Klein and two other passengers testified to the horror they felt as Clifford, whom they knew well from previous incidents, again went berserk.
Clifford began yelling at Bender, starting with “Shut up!” proceeding to “Shut the f – – – up,” and then accelerating out of control to “F – – – ing faggot!” the three told Judge Larry Stephen.
“Mr. Clifford hit my hand, and I just couldn’t believe he had violated my space,” Klein testified.