Revisiting Flagrant Parking Placard Abuse

Very little was done about this odious form of public corruption under Bloomberg.  Aside from the obvious public policy reasons for a crackdown, letting this continue to slide also undermines respect for the law.  The in-your-face nature of the cheating by government employees/retirees inspires contempt and reinforces the notion that the system is rigged. 

WNBC Shames City for Letting Employees Hog Parking With Bogus Placards

"While surveys of retail districts around the city show that most customers don't arrive in private cars, placard abuse leads customers who do drive to clog up streets as they search for an open spot. And that can foil the city's attempts to reform curbside parking prices. At the Atlantic Avenue BID's request last year, DOT implemented its PARK Smart program, which adjusts parking meter rates to improve parking availability and cut down on cruising for spots. But Department of Corrections employees at a jail in Boerum Hill have been hogging spaces near Atlantic Avenue, using invalid placards, union cards, employee handbooks, Corrections Department baseball caps, and coat patches — none of which are supposed to provide free parking. The lawbreaking is flagrant, but WNBC caught NYPD parking enforcement agents repeatedly looking in the windows of cars with bogus placards and walking right by. "Are you not supposed to write tickets for people that have placards or the union cards? What's going on?" Llamas asked, as the agent ignored him."

http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/07/14/wnbc-shames-city-for-giving-away-curb-space-as-illegal-entitlement-for-employees/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Streetsblog+%28Streetsblog%29

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