De Blasio: NYPD Towing Cars For Football Game 'Can't Happen'

INWOOD, NY — Mayor Bill de Blasio shunned the NYPD for towing an Upper Manhattan street to allow police to park next to the site of a department football game, according to reports. The public criticism marks a rare instance where the mayor and NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill find themselves at odds.

At the tail end of a Monday press conference de Blasio said of the NYPD's decision to tow about 30 civilian cars on West 218th Street between Broadway and Indian Road: "Yeah, that can’t happen again. That was wrong," as reported by the Daily News.

"Commissioner O'Neill knows I feel strongly on this matter and that is not something we can see happen again because it undermines the faith we’re trying to build between police and community," the mayor added.

The vehicles were towed on Sunday, March 3 for the NYPD's flag football championship game at the Baker Field Athletics Complex. After civilian vehicles were moved, NYPD personnel parked their cars in the vacated spaces, often with placards or police vests in the windshield.

One car had a handwritten note on its dashboard reading, "on police commissioner's flag football team."

An NYPD spokeswoman said that residents were notified of the parking restrictions for the game on Wednesday, Feb. 27.

Police Commissioner James O'Neill denied that the department's actions constitute placard abuse and said that civilian cars were "relocated," not towed, during a press conference last week. The police commissioner described the football game as a "special event."

"It's not placard abuse. It was clearly marked no parking on Sunday," O'Neill said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio outlined a new plan to crack down on placard abuse in February that will replace physical placards with stickers and then move to an entirely digital system.

More than 125,000 city-issued placards were in circulation last year, 50,000 of which belonged to the Department of Transportation, the mayor's office said. The use of placards has greatly expanded during de Blasio's tenure — there were only 67,297 around in 2008, according to The New York Times.