NYPD Turns Blind Eye to Illegally Parked City Vehicles, Brooklyn Official Admits (Updated)

Photo courtesy of Benjamin Shepard

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN, NY — Brooklyn Councilman Steve Levin admitted Tuesday that the NYPD deliberately fails to enforce parking rules on Jay Street, especially when the offending vehicles are city-owned. He also said he was unsure if even the city's top officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, have the power to fix the situation.

Levin, who represents Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill and parts of Bed-Stuy, made the statements during Community Board 2's Transportation and Public Safety subcommittee meeting.

The bulk of the meeting was reserved for discussion of a Department of Transportation (DOT) plan for new bike lanes on Jay Street.

During the impassioned comment period that followed, members of the committee and the public complained that police cars, city vehicles and cars owned by city employees routinely park wherever they want on Jay, particularly in the bike lane — endangering cyclists and rendering the point of creating new bike lanes moot.

Levin agreed that parking problems on the busy downtown street have been especially severe as of late, and said that he would reach out to de Blasio's office ASAP to seek a resolution.

However, Levin also questioned whether the city's highest-ranking officials could change the reality on the ground.

Levin said the non-enforcement of parking rules on Jay stems from an apparent "professional courtesy" extended by "uniformed officers" to other government workers.

Parking abuses on Jay Street are a constant source of anger in the neighborhood. Last November, activists from the Public Space Party issued home-made tickets to cars — some of them cop cars — parked illegally. And last Monday, comedic pedestrian advocate Jorge Canez donned a cape and Mexican wrestling mask to defend local pedestrians from vehicles drifting into crosswalks and bike lanes.

On Tuesday, activists in attendance at the CB2 meeting seemed skeptical that city leaders would suddenly address what has become a status-quo problem.

When Hayes Lord, director of the DOT's bike program, suggested the agency could work with the NYPD to encourage more rigorous enforcement of parking laws — even sending out DOT staffers to help patrol the Jay Street area — peels of laughter came from the audience.

Leading committee member William Harris suggested parking enforcers would need "AK-47s" to be effective.

Councilman Levin's spokesman, Glomani Bravo-Lopez, told Patch by phone Wednesday that the issue of patrolling Jay Street came up simultaneously at a Tuesday night meeting hosted by the NYPD's 84th Precinct, which is in charge of the area.

According to Bravo-Lopez, Deputy Inspector Sergio Centa, who heads the 84th, said at the meeting that being a member of the Policemen's Benevolent Association does not protect drivers from tickets.

However, Bravo-Lopez said he also heard Centa make claim that NYPD officers do not have the authority to ticket illegally parked city vehicles.

*Updated: Patch spoke with Bravo-Lopez again later on Wednesday, and the staffer said he had spoken with Centa a second time.

The officer clarified that the NYPD does have the authority to ticket illegally parked city vehicles, Bravo-Lopez said, but chooses not to because those employees might have a justifiable reason for parking where they have, one unknown to an enforcement official.

However, according to Bravo-Lopez, Centa confirmed that PBA identification and city placards don't convey parking rule immunity.

Bravo-Lopez said he took a two-hour walk in downtown Brooklyn Wednesday and observed between 80 and 100 illegally parked cars that fell into those two categories. About half had been issued tickets, he said.

The staffer said he wrote down the license plate numbers of offending vehicles and passed the information along to the 84th precinct.

Bravo-Lopez said he wasn't sure how Levin wanted to approach the issue going forward, but added that this issue will "take a bigger fix, for sure."

Patch has reached out to both the NYPD and de Blasio's office for comment. We'll update this post with any response(s) we receive.