NYC has gotten out of hand in recent years, with a visible increase in the homeless on the streets, and parking violations being ignored.
Today I want to focus on those parking violations, and how the NYPD is either turning a blind eye or just flat out not patrolling and cracking down on the seemingly “minor crimes” of parking violations:
- There is a used car dealer doing work on the street, on a major avenue just a few blocks from my house, that snarls up traffic and takes up all the parking spots
- He usually starts with a car carrier pulling up in a driving lane and stopping there for 1-2 hours, to unload 6+ cars that all have prices and info on their windows. This carrier reduces the road to just one lane, which quickly slows traffic, including MTA buses and commercial traffic.
- They unload the cars, parking them (with no license plates at this time) at bus stops, hydrants, and taking up a long stretch of metered parking (without paying the meters)
- What follows is hours of work on the cars: Changing batteries, cleaning prices off the windows, and generic work on the cars
- When the day is done they pop out of state plates on the cars and leave them until the next day, when they move them and bring in the next shipment
- On my block, there are a few hydrants at which cars are parked throughout the day. In NYC it’s illegal to park at a fire hydrant, but these people have no shame in doing it, day or night. Sometimes they’ll pull their cars up as close as they can to the curb, hoping that a patrol car driving by won’t notice the hydrant…this makes it harder, in the event of a fire, for the FDNY to get around the parked vehicle to use the hydrant
- Illegal driveways — This one is a tougher fight. People don’t park in front of them, because they see it as a driveway, and even if they would they would face the backlash of the homeowners. But these driveways cut away from the street parking, causing people to park at the hydrants. Yes, I understand that the driveway occupants would just park in that spot, evening out the number …but the hours that they are away would lead to extra spots.
Aviously 