Death Threats Trail Park Slope Man's Parking Complaint: Report

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Tony Melone got his first death threat about an hour after filing a 311 complaint about a truck blocking a South Slope bus stop and shoveling snow onto the vehicle.

"I’m gonna kill you, Melone," a man told him over the phone, in what was the first of five calls he received that day from people threatening to kill him and violently hurt his wife and children, Streetsblog reported.

The Brooklyn resident is not the first person to face harassment after filing a 311 complaint, Streetsblog reported, pointing to a pattern of intimidating calls that people told the site they received after alerting the police to driver misconduct (a pattern that the NYPD is now investigating).

When Melone got in touch with the police after the second threatening call, though, officers reportedly said they couldn't do much about the threats and encouraged the Brooklyn resident to file another complaint if he saw the truck parked illegally.

"If [311 is] getting used to harass the people that are reporting the problems, that’s really disturbing," he said, noting that it's unsettling to think how people knew his name and number in the first place, since when he provided that information to 311 in confidence.

A spokesperson for 311 told Streetsblog that "details of the complaint were sent directly to the local precinct for response." The NYPD wouldn't answer the site's questions about whether officers shared Melone's information with anyone after the report.

The truck's owner, who identified himself as Don to Streetsblog, told the site in an interview that he didn't make the threatening calls but didn't have sympathy for Melone, who reportedly cracked his truck's windshield by shoveling snow onto it.

"He deserves everything he gets. I think death threats is a bit extreme. But if he gets an a**-whooping, he gets an a**-whooping," Don told Streetsblog adding that he plans to file a police report against Melone because of the broken windshield.

"I did nothing to offend him, nothing to harm him, nothing of the sort. Why would you sit down and do that to my vehicle?," the truck owner said to Streetsblog.

Melone, however, sees it differently, especially after watching an old woman struggle to get from the bus to the sidewalk because the truck was in the way.

"I had no intention of damaging the truck — didn’t think some snow could do that — but I did want to create an inconvenience for the driver who had inconvenienced so many bus riders," Melone told the site.

At the end of the day, though, he blames the situation on the police.

"None of this had to happen if they had just enforced basic parking rules," he told Streetsblog.

Read the full Streetsblog report here.