Retired NYPD patrolman Steven Weinberg (a.k.a. tagger "Neo") will not be doing any hard time for his extracurricular graffiti. But the cane-wielding former-cop will be on probation for three years, owes $700 in fines, has to participate in the "Paint Straight" program, will never own a gun in NY again, and had to suffer through a lecture on values from a Queens judge. So he isn't exactly scot-free. "Its time for you to put your family in front of those friends you talk to," Justice Salvatore Modica told Weinberg in court today.
"You're a complicated guy, not a bad guy, a complicated guy," the judge went on to say to the tagger—who maintains that because of the injury that caused him to retire from the NYPD and walk with a cane he could not have committed the crime he was found guilty of. "I know you have physical problems and have pain, but it doesn't excuse the criminal behavior."
Weinberg has admitted that he tagged "Neo" in the subways throughout the 1980s with the Nation of Graffiti crew, but says he gave it all up in 1995 when he joined the force at age 27. "I'm not hanging out with people," Weinberg told the News on his way out of court today. "I didn't do the graffiti on the highway. That's why I fought this all along."
Weinberg was found guilty of criminal mischief in the fourth-degree for putting his tag on a Clearview Expressway overpass in 2009.
