NYPD Cracking Down On Parking Placard Abuse In New York City
At least thirty people were charged with using fake parking placards in New York City on October 3, 2017, the largest one-day raid sting operation by the NYPD since the creation of its new 16-person placard-enforcement unit in May 2017.
The raid was part of a larger move to crack down on illegal placard abuse in a city with 8.5 million people and only 85,000 metered parking spaces available. Parking placards are reserved for the disabled, government employees, Department of Education workers, and other parties.
There are over 160,000 placards citywide, including 44,496 NYPD placards, 62,000 DOE placards, and 54,020 DOT placards, according to Mayor de Blasio and his administration. NYPD officials said there were around 488 complaints of fake passes made in 2015, but the city’s new placard-enforcement unit has given 2,700 summonses since its creation earlier this year, according to NYPD Chief Thomas Chan.
“When someone in a Mercedes rolls into a parking space that was designated for people with disabilities or for ambulates, they are stealing from New Yorkers,” DOI Commissioner Mark Peters told WCBS 880 at the time of the arrests.
Mayor De Blasio said that those using fake placards for parking would have to deal with the consequences during a press conference in May 2017.
“Before anyone thinks it’s a clever idea to misuse our placards, my advice is you better get to know where our impound lots are — because you’re going to end up visiting them,” de Blasio said. “We have a big focus with our enforcement agents in making sure that if there’s a placard, it’s being used appropriately.”
NYPD Chief Thomas Chan said the increase in summons relating to the offense reflects the city’s commitment to identifying placard abusers.
“Since the beginning of the year we’ve also done placard enforcement on a regular basis, so for the year-to-date we have over 15,600 summonses that are issued to placards and related to that, and that’s 13 percent more than we did last year,” he said in June 2017. “So we are continuing [the program].”
The fine for an illegal parking placard can cost up to $100, in addition to the parking violation.
One Twitter account, @placardabuse, documents civilians illegally parking with fake placards daily. The account documents offenses such as police officers failing to ticket fake placard users to placards on windshields that they believe are fake.
While the account documents misuse and failure to reprimand those parking illegally, not all city officials believe they’re getting off easy.
In response to one tweet that featured photographs of an illegal plate cover and a New York Department of Sanitation placard with the caption, “Why do city employees think they’re exempt from traffic laws, @NYCMayor?” one employee replied that was not the case.
Scott Wyman Neagle wrote “Not all city employees. I’m ticketed if my DOE placard is 1 day past exp.”
