Reporter Accosted While Documenting Placard Abuse by Law Enforcement Personnel
A reporter was assaulted on Monday afternoon when photographing illegally parked vehicles owned by police officers who have used the west side of River Terrace (along Rockefeller Park) for years as a free lot for their vehicles. The reporter was on the scene to document the ongoing abuse of this space—which is legally designated “no stopping, no standing, no parking” to allow emergency vehicles access to Battery Park City’s north neighborhood—as a de facto parking facility for law enforcement personnel.
When she was approached by a woman whose vehicle was illegally parked on River Terrace, the reporter asked if this woman had a law enforcement placard. The woman, who did not identify herself, came close in an intimidating manner and tried to grab the phone the reporter was using to take photographs. She twisted the reporter’s hand and fingers as she uttered threats. She grabbed the reporter’s glasses and hurled them onto the street. A passer-by moved to intervene.
Each weekday, approximately 35 vehicles displaying law enforcement credentials utilize this quarter-mile long street as their private parking lot. Most of these vehicles appear to belong to officers assigned to the New York Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), an arm of the Drug Enforcement Administration that is headquartered at 250 Vesey Street, in Brookfield Place. Because this office, which brings together more than 100 officers from a dozen-plus City, State, and federal agencies, conducts sensitive, undercover investigations, it must conceal from public view the vehicles it uses for actual law enforcement operations. For this reason, OCDETF pays for 130 parking spaces in an underground garage within 250 Vesey Street.
The vehicles parked on River Terrace appear not to be used for any official purpose. Rather, they are used by officers driving between their homes and the OCDETF office at Brookfield Place. During a 2018 meeting with Community Board 1 leaders convened to address illegal parking by law enforcement personnel in Battery Park City, a New York Police Department commander was blunt, telling CB1 members that the officers at OCDETF required dozens of street parking spaces “for commutation purposes.”
The reporter was photographing illegally parked vehicles on River Terrace to illustrate a Broadsheet story about two recent probes, one by federal prosecutors and another by the City’s Department of Investigation (DOI), both of which reached parallel conclusions: that police officers flagrantly disregard the law they are sworn to uphold, by helping themselves to parking privileges.
The federal probe, conducted by the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), determined in April that “NYPD vehicles and the personal vehicles of NYPD employees frequently obstruct sidewalks and crosswalks in the vicinity of NYPD precincts.” (In this context, the OCDETF office at 250 Vesey Street is the equivalent of a police precinct.)
The federal report continues, “the information that SDNY has reviewed to date establishes that the sidewalks and crosswalks adjacent to NYPD precincts are subject to frequent obstructions by both the private and police vehicles of NYPD members, resulting in inaccessibility of the pedestrian grid. Most notably, a recent study identified parking behaviors at 91 percent of the NYPD’s precincts that resulted in obstructions to sidewalks and crosswalks with the potential to render those pathways inaccessible.”
Separately, the probe by the City’s DOI found that “the NYPD’s enforcement of parking permit misuse at the street level has been uneven and inadequate in that Traffic Enforcement Agents and NYPD officers frequently choose not to issue summonses to illegally parked vehicles displaying parking permits.”
As part of this probe, DOI anonymously called in multiple 311 complaints about actual instances of illegally parked vehicles displaying NYPD credentials. The results of these “integrity tests” documented that “NYPD took no enforcement action in any of the instances of parking permit misuse reported by DOI; in half of the reported instances NYPD personnel did not respond to the complaints at all.” Yet each of these complaints was administratively categorized by NPYD either as “unfounded” or “resolved.” This result raises troubling questions about the possible falsification of government records by police officers, in furtherance of the placard abuse described in the SDNY and DOI reports.
The murky distinction between abusing placards (which are intended to facilitate official business or operations by government personnel in an emergency) and outright police corruption is worth considering. Dozens of law enforcement personnel use placards to park each day throughout Battery Park City (and hundreds more do the same throughout Lower Manhattan) in spaces that are off limits to people not fortunate enough to have such credentials. And the monetary value of such a privilege is substantial. Daily parking in a local garage runs, on average, to more than $50. Extrapolated to five days per week, and 50 weeks per year (allowing two off for vacation), this comes to $12,500.
Alternately, parking illegally on the street requires an even-larger budget, because the City’s parking enforcement agents are authorized to write repeated tickets to a single vehicle for the same violation throughout the day. But assume, conservatively, that a vehicle parked illegally is ticketed twice each day for the same number of days described above, and that each summons carries a fine of $101: the average price of a parking ticket in Battery Park City, which is tied for the highest anywhere in the five boroughs, according to a 2017 study by SpotAngels (a smartphone app that offers users real-time data about available street parking options nearby). In this hypothetical, the cost of the privilege rises to $50,500 per year.
In either scenario, hundreds of government employees appear to be helping themselves to an illegal gratuity worth tens of thousands of dollars per year each. In an era when a police officer would fear serious consequences for accepting a free sandwich from a sidewalk vendor, this pattern of conduct raises sobering questions about integrity.
At its May 28 meeting, Community Board 1 enacted a resolution deploring the abuse of placards by NYPD personnel and other government employees, and calling for (among other measures), “legislation that would allow citizen reporting of government-owned vehicles and vehicles with government-issued placards that are obstructing sidewalks, pedestrian ramps, crosswalks, bike lanes, bus lanes and bus stops.” Given the Broadsheet reporter’s experience on Monday afternoon, however, any Lower Manhattan resident who attempts to document such lawlessness on the part of government officials may do so at their own peril.
meanwhile crime goes unabated – but thank god we have a team on the job looking at this massive issue !
Thank you! I live in North Battery Park City (and don’t own a car) and the brazenness is astounding. The police tow trucks come by frequently to tow cars, however, they conspicuously avoid towing or ticketing any of their pals’ cars parked illegally on River Terrace or North End. If one inquires, they will tell you through a smirk that you should call 311. If these areas are required for parking police officers’ personal vehicles then the rules should reflect that. It becomes difficult to see police enforcement as legitimate if they refuse to enforce the rules on themselves.
One thing that you should add to your story is that many of these cars are among the worst offenders citywide. On a recent Wednesday, the unticketed cars parked illegally in the neighborhood totaled 149. Of these, four have accumulated over $10,000 of parking and camera issued fines. In the past 18 months, 21% of these 149 vehicles have been cited at least twice for speeding in school zones; one of the most egregious acts of disregard from the wellbeing of our community. At least one vehicle would qualify for the dangerous vehicle abatement program and could be seized based on school zone speeding alone. (Data courtesy of How’s My Driving NY and NYC Open Data)
Those getting a free ride in North Battery Park City are some of the worst road users around.
What are we going to do about it?
Every car on that street has a placard and almost every car has a defaced or altered license plate (like the Chevy in the photo), so these cheats aren’t paying tolls either.