By Courtney Dentch
State Sen. Ada Smith (D-Jamaica) denied that she nearly hit a state trooper while pulling into an Albany parking garage during an argument over her Senate-issued identification card last week.
She said she drove away slowly to continue the dispute at her parking spot.
Smith admitted she used obscenities to chastise a garage employee who tried to reach for her wallet to get a closer look at her ID. As the discussion escalated, she said she invited the employee and a state trooper to pursue the conversation inside the garage before pulling away from the gate.
“I showed the parking attendant the ID, and I went to close my wallet and he grabbed at it,” Smith said. “I told him, 'You do not grab a woman's wallet.'”
The confrontation unfolded just after 9 a.m. May 21 as Smith was making her way to the legislative building in Albany, she said. She pulled out the special identification card that all the state lawmakers were issued after the Sept. 11 attacks as part of the enhanced security, she said.
Smith, who is serving her seventh term in the Senate, flashed the ID at the attendant and went to drive into the garage when he tried to reach inside her Crown Victoria to get a closer look at the ID, she said.
As Smith and the parking attendant began to argue, the trooper posted at the garage took notice and came over, but he demanded the legislator “surrender the identification,” Smith said.
“I took it out for the trooper and held it in my hand, but he wanted me to surrender it,” she said. “I would not do that because I was given the ID by the state Senate. If anything, I would return it to them.”
Traffic started to build behind Smith's car as the dispute continued, and she said she pulled away from the two men slowly, inviting them to continue the conversation after she parked.
The trooper originally accused her of speeding off and nearly hitting him, Smith said, but she said that between a speed bump and a couple tight turns, she could not have floored it.
“It would be very hard for me to speed through this area,” she said.
Smith said she waited at her parking spot for about 15 minutes, but neither the trooper nor the parking attendant took her up on her offer.
State troopers could not be reached for comment.
Smith also criticized the uneven security in Albany, saying that while the parking lots and the Capitol building are guarded, the legislative building has no security in place.
“This is a tremendous building with no security,” Smith said. “What they're saying is that 'we guard the cars, we guard the governor, but to hell with the legislators and their staff.'”
Smith, the Democratic whip, has been involved in other unusual behavior, including allegedly biting a police officer during a traffic dispute in Brooklyn in 1998.
Reach reporter Courtney Dentch by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com, or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 138.
