Recently I had to deal with an abandoned car, and had another instance of NYC and the NYPD just ignoring the problems in front of them, since it was easier to make believe it didn’t exist.
Someone parked an out-of-state car on my block, with its bumper thrown in the back seat, and left it there for four weeks.
It was parked shortly after alternate side parking restrictions, on a Thursday afternoon, and a week later it picked up its first ticket, as it was improperly parked during that time.
12 days after it was initially parked, on Tuesday afternoon, I filed it with 3-1-1 as abandoned, and within 2-hours the NYPD had updated it with:
The Police Department responded to the complaint and determined that police action was not necessary.
Really? Okay, cool.
Two days later, as that Thursday restrictions rolled around again, the NYPD traffic enforcers came around gave the car a ticket, placing it on top of the one from the week before…on a vehicle already listed as “abandoned”.
So I reached out and Tweeted to the 66th Precinct and my local councilman, saying:
This is ridiculous. 66th Precinct just added another ticket to this car for alternate street parking (on top of the other ones already on there), but don’t think it’s an issue?!
And the 66 responded saying:
Great, Friday, July 27th should be the end of this vehicle taking up a parking space, and preventing the street from getting cleaned.
Except it wasn’t…as no one showed up to look at it. And despite follow-up tweets from me on Monday and Tuesday, nothing changed.
As I came home on Thursday, the third one that it was illegally parked on, I saw a traffic enforcement agent putting a third ticket on it, on top of the other two that were starting to shrivel up from sitting in the sun.
I got out of the car and walked over to the agent, who surprisingly didn’t speak English. As I tried to have a conversation with him about the vehicle, asking him “What do I have to do to get this car towed”, he just walked away repeating the line “I’m just doing my job”, ignoring what I was saying and just wanting to get on with his day.
The real question is, why is he able to put a ticket on a car that already has two for the same violation, and not be obligated to call it in for a removal?
After he left I walked down the block, where a car from a different precinct was pulled over, and asked them for advice. They told me to call the 66 and ask for a Tow.
So I called the 66 directly and spoke to someone at the switchboard, who said they would send someone out to take a look.
Before the end of the hour a cruiser had pulled up, and shortly after a tow truck showed up and removed the car.
Seriously, that’s all it took in the end.
But it’s a little sad that in the summer months, when traffic is down in the area, it still takes weeks to get a reported abandoned vehicle, with tickets piling up, off the streets.
Aviously 