Retired pro hockey star Jeremy Roenick recently spent some time in the bureaucracy’s penalty box — and the outspoken hockey star did not go quietly.
Roenick, 47, an Arizona resident who comes to the city to work for NBC Sports, had to appear in Manhattan Criminal Court Monday to deal with a desk appearance for driving with a suspended license.
He was arrested at Sixth Ave. and W. 23rd St. on Jan. 25, for making a bad right turn on his way to a Rangers game, when cops discovered his privilege to drive in the state had been suspended.
Roenick, who spent 20 years in the National Hockey League and retired in 2009, said he had no clue he was in such a jam.
“They were sending my notices for a suspended license and my fees to an address from 20 years ago and then they had the balls to tell me that it was my responsibility to update my address with the New York DMV, when I don’t live here,” he fumed.
Roenick, who spent three hours at the 13th Precinct stationhouse, told the Daily News that he’d paid a speeding ticket he’d gotten about a year ago in Westchester County and that there was no mention of the additional $675 “driver’s assessment fee.”
The notifications came later — to an address that was a distant memory. The NBC studio analyst went to the DMV the day after his arrest, paid the extra fine and was told it was his responsibility to update his address with the agency.
He’d given police his Arizona license with his current address. Yet the address the DMV relied on the one that was on their books from 1989, in Westchester.
In court, he pleaded to a traffic violation and agreed to another fine. After going before the judge, he paid the clerk another $163.
“The stupidity of what I’m doing is beyond,” he said, shaking his head by the clerk’s window.
“I’m out $750. Not only my time. Plus I got arrested. Plus I sat in a jail cell with cokeheads. Plus I sat in the courtroom with real criminals. I’ve never been arrested before in my life!” he fumed.
“Why do I give a f— if the DMV knows where I live or not. I don’t live in New York! Do I have to call every other state’s DMV?”
“Why, if I don’t live in New York, would I ever think to call the DMV to let them know what my current address is? It’s absolutely ludicrous,” he added. “New York DMV ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
Roenick, a former Olympian who played for the Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers, blasted the agency for their “inefficiency, their ineptness and their ridiculous, I mean, broken system.”
“I get arrested, it gets put on my record. Fines. Fees. Times. Now I’m here on the taxpayer’s money doing something I shouldn’t have to do because these a–holes don’t know what the f— they’re doing!”
His lawyer, Arthur Aidala, called the situation “a very trivial oversight.”
“This is an enormous waste of time and resources,” he added outside the courtroom.