Don't Get Caught In This Windsor Terrace Ticket Trap

WINDSOR TERRACE, BROOKLYN — Christopher Kearny fired up his green Toyota Corolla and set out to avoid the bi-weekly street sweepers and pricey parking tickets that land on the windshields of cars left in their wake.

He found a suitable spot a few blocks away, across the street from his daughter's school.

The arrow on a "no parking" sign pointed away from his car, and there wasn't a splatter of yellow paint on the curb. So he locked up the car and headed to work.

When his wife dropped their daughter off at school the next morning, though, she spotted a dreaded red-and-white slip of paper stuck to the windshield — a $115 ticket for parking within 15 feet of a fire hydrant.

"She was shocked," Kearny said. "She read the ticket, and she was like, 'fire hydrant?'"

Upon closer examination, though, there it was — a decrepit-looking fire hydrant with peeling red-and-gray paint behind a waist-high, wrought iron fence covered in ivy.

"No one would ever suspect there’s a fire hydrant there," Kearny said.

In most of New York City, fire hydrants are hard to miss. They typically sit on the edge of the sidewalk or curb, sometimes between hard-t0-miss bollards.

The hydrant bordering the grassy knoll on Ocean Parkway about 120 feet from East Fifth Street across from P.S. 130 is different. It sits several feet from the road, obscured from view by the fence and unkempt vegetation without a single sign marking the spot illegal.

A Google Streetview image of that block taken a year ago shows a purple sedan and tan SUV parked bumper-to-bumper on the curb, unaware of the then-gray hydrant behind the fence and positioned several feet back from the road. Both cars in the picture have tickets on their windshields.

Kearny puts it this way: There's only two people who know there's a hydrant there. The people slapping tickets on windows, and the people peeling them off.

As far as he's concerned, the city picked his pocket.

Well, he's not alone, Patch has learned.

Drivers got 148 tickets for parking near that hydrant between July 2016 and Oct. 16, according to city records. At $115 a ticket, that one fire hydrant scored the city's Finance Department at least $17,000 in fines during that time.

Kearny says he looks for ticketed cars there almost every day. "And I'd say at least 90 percent of the time I see tickets on vehicles," he said.

Most tickets were issued between 6 and about 6:45 a.m., and around 2 p.m, city records show.

On a sunny afternoon last week, two cars were parked in the spot that cost Kearny, and so many other drivers at least $115 bucks.

Kearny, though, isn't going to just roll over and pay the fine. He says he's going to fight the ticket in traffic court.

He also wants the city to protect his neighbors from getting caught in the ticket trap. Kearny said he called Councilman Brad Lander's office for help and was told by a staffer the councilman asked the city transportation department to move the "no parking" sign over to include the space in front of the hydrant.

Despite assurances from Lander's office, it remains unclear if any action will be taken. So far, the location of signs hasn't changed, and the curb remains unpainted.

Windsor Terrace, you've been warned.

Lead image by Marc Torrence, Patch Staff