New York Daily News -
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Traffic cop's victory caps turban tussle
BY FERNANDA SANTOS
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU
Thursday, July 1st, 2004
The City's Human Rights Commission has ordered the NYPD to reinstate a Sikh traffic agent and let him wear his turban on the job.
"Mission accomplished!" an ecstatic Jasjit Singh Jaggi told the Daily News yesterday from his home in Killington, Vt.
"I'm very excited, very happy," Jaggi said. "I can't wait to get my job back."
Jaggi, who quit rather than violate the tenets of his religion, must be put back to work immediately or the NYPD may have to fork over $100 for each day it violates the commission's decree.
The Police Department could also be fined $50,000, according to the city's Administrative Code.
Jaggi, 36, quit in August 2002 after he refused to discard his turban, then filed a discrimination complaint with the Human Rights Commission.
The city commission ruled that the NYPD did not prove its chief argument that failure to wear the regulation white, eight-point cap would make Jaggi unrecognizable as a traffic agent and might subject him to racist remarks.
"We are disappointed that the city commission did not recognize that the Police Department's enforcement of its uniform requirements for its traffic enforcement agents is necessary to maintain the safety of the public ... and to encourage the neutrality, recognizability, morale, safety and esprit de corps of the traffic agents," Eamonn Foley, the city's assistant corporation counsel, said in a statement.
The city is weighing whether to appeal the ruling, Foley said.
The Human Rights Commission's landmark order serves as precedent to other Sikhs fighting city agencies for their right to wear a turban while at work.
Though the state has not been named in any litigation, "the matter is of interest" to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, spokeswoman Juanita Scarlett said.
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