The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It (tumblr.com)

Data analyst Ben Wellington claims that that the NYPD has been systematically ticketing legally parked cars for years. Doing so, he says, helps NYPD collect millions of dollars every year. In a blog post, Wellington notes about a change of law in 2008 (PDF) which allowed one in New York City to park their car in front of a sidewalk pedestrian ramp -- provided it's not connected to a crosswalk. Despite this, the NYPD continues to ticket people. To check how many more people are falling for this, Wellington looked into NYC's Open Data portal, and his findings are startling. In front of 575 Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn, which is in the middle of the block, with no crosswalk, over $48,000 in parking fines were issued in the last 2.5 years. He writes: 1705 Canton Avenue in Brooklyn, 273 Tickets, $45,045: Legal. 270-05 76 Avenue in Queens, 256 Tickets ($42,440) Legal. 143-49 Cherry Ave, Queens, 246 Tickets, ($40,590). Legal. A spot in Battery Park, ranked #16 on my list and the top spot in Manhattan, had 116 tickets ($19,140) and turned out to be legal.Wellington wrote to the NYPD about this, and he got the following response: Mr. Wellington's analysis identified errors the department made in issuing parking summonses. It appears to be a misunderstanding by officers on patrol of a recent, abstruse change in the parking rules. We appreciate Mr. Wellington bringing this anomaly to our attention. The department's internal analysis found that patrol officers who are unfamiliar with the change have observed vehicles parked in front of pedestrian ramps and issued a summons in error. When the rule changed in 2009 to allow for certain pedestrian ramps to be blocked by parked vehicles, the department focused training on traffic agents, who write the majority of summonses.

Comments

Re: Power WILL be abused

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed there was no mention of refunding the illegal ticket fines. Typical, sure we'll try to get them to stop but why would you get any money back?

So how do they plain to fix wronged people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they refund people and wipe their record of the error?

Re:So how do they plain to fix wronged people?

[Agent0013]

I'm thinking they will end up refunding or a class action suit will happen. It's the cops responsibility to know the laws they are writing out tickets for.

Sorry, that is wrong. Courts have found that you cannot expect a police officer to know the law that they are enforcing. And if they make a mistake it is ok and they can proceed with your trial and incarceration. http://thinkprogress.org/justi...

Re:So how do they plain to fix wronged people?

[SeaFox]

Courts have found that you cannot expect a police officer to know the law that they are enforcing.

Meanwhile, on the flip-side, ignorantia juris non excusat.

Ignorance of the law

[Locke2005]

Ignorance of the law is an accepted excuse for law enforcement's mistakes, but not an acceptable excuse for the mistakes of people being punished by law enforcement. That's fair, right?

Re:Ignorance of the law

[myowntrueself]

Ignorance of the law is an accepted excuse for law enforcement's mistakes, but not an acceptable excuse for the mistakes of people being punished by law enforcement. That's fair, right?

At least in Toronto the city and the police just threw their arms up in the air and said "You know what? The laws and regulations concerning taxis are just so complicated we just don't know what the fuck to enforce so we aren't enforcing anything and uber can just carry right on."

This is a huge problem in North America; so many layers of laws and regulations and by-laws no one knows what the law is, not Joe public, not the cops, not the courts.

Re:Ignorance of the law

[twotacocombo]

This is a huge problem in North America; so many layers of laws and regulations and by-laws no one knows what the law is, not Joe public, not the cops, not the courts.

I'm assuming this is by design. When things are so complicated that it takes a lawyer many billable hours to figure out where you can legally park, it stacks the odds heavily in the citys favor and turns anything they want into an easy revenue stream. They may lose a few contested citations here and there, but the majority of people will grumble and just pay up. Until the police have to actively prove every ticket they write is legit, it's a guilty till proven innocent situation that most people aren't prepared to fight.

Re:Ignorance of the law

[Anon-Admin]

People laugh at me when I say it is a conflict of interest to have lawyers making laws. (Most elected officials are lawyers)

Well, this is what you get. It is advantageous for lawyers to make complicated laws so only they can figure them out.

Re:Ignorance of the law

[shawn2772]

This is a huge problem in North America; so many layers of laws and regulations and by-laws no one knows what the law is, not Joe public, not the cops, not the courts.

I'm assuming this is by design. When things are so complicated that it takes a lawyer many billable hours to figure out where you can legally park, it stacks the odds heavily in the citys favor and turns anything they want into an easy revenue stream.

I think Hanlon's Razor favors a different explanation, namely that the people who make the laws don't really understand them either. They make changes in a reactive manner when they see something that's a problem or doesn't make sense, and they apply a minimal patch to the law (avoiding refactoring) that appears to resolve the problem they're trying to address, in their jurisdiction. They also don't coordinate with higher or lower jurisdictions, and indeed don't necessarily even pay any attention to what those other jurisdictions are doing.

That sort of a process creates spaghetti law, just the way doing the same thing in software creates spaghetti code. Without careful attention to modularization, separation of concerns, without a willingness to refactor when necessary, and without extensive tests to validate that changes don't cause regressions, what you get is a mess.

Re:Ignorance of the law

[Shortguy881]

Most doctors, architects and engineers are trying to make the world a better place. Lawyers on the other hand...

Democracy

[CauseBy]

This is democracy in action. It isn't perfect, but good luck trying to get a King to change like that.

I grew up in Anchorage in the 1990s. We were so fed up with overzealous parking enforcement that we disbanded the parking authority by referendum.

After that only uniformed police officers could write tickets. That was a much more tolerable and balanced level of enforcement.

Re:Democracy

[Solandri]

A better way would be to decouple fines from the government revenue stream. Instead of fines for things like parking tickets going into the city coffers, it goes into a trust fund. Every year on April 15, each tax filer gets a proportional share of the total value of that fund applied to their taxes. The fine is punishment for doing something which harms the public, and that money is redistributed to the public which was harmed. No middleman (government) manipulating it to their advantage.

The city no longer has an incentive to overzealously issue parking tickets, and manpower is instead devoted to things that matter, like violent crime and the occasional illegal parking which actually endangers people (parking in front of hydrants, blocking driveways, etc).

Re:autonomous cars can't arrive soon enough

[Applehu Akbar]

I'm looking forward to autonomous cars driving a stake into the hearts of vampiric police departments... but only after proclaiming, "here are your 30 pieces of silver, you Judas!" and dumping a bag of silver coins on their searing flesh. It really is the most satisfying way to pay parking tickets.

This is actually what will happen. As cars go autonomous, the need for parking at the places you visit will diminish. It will take a generation, but eventually, so will parking at homes and places of work. Autonomous cars will 'rest' in off-street buffer lots and maintenance warehouses, and it will be No Parking forever citywide.

In unrelated news

[ThatsNotPudding]

Data analyst Ben Wellington is now on the Terrorist Watch List, is randomly stopped and frisked on a daily basis, and selected for state tax audits every quarter.

Re:Power WILL be abused

[Agent0013]

On the one hand, I kinda agree with you. Let the cops issue whatever tickets they want, and let it be hashed out in the courts. It's no different from letting anyone sue anyone else for anything, and letting it get hashed out in the courts. On the other hand, then you get things like "I'm innocent, but it's too much of a hassle to prove, so I'll just pay the damn fine", and I feel that cops, or hell, government in general, should be held to a standard that discourages such practices.

And I also support the use of deadly force as self defense against the "mafia in blue". If they break the law so frequently with no consequences, then they are no longer the upholders of the law. They are just another criminal organization and defending yourself against them trying to kidnap or shoot you is perfectly acceptable.

Only a ticket? Meh...

[damn_registrars]

I lived for a while in a place where car theft was legal - if you happened to own an impound lot. My car was stolen by such a lot owner from my reserved, paid, contract parking spot and the city wouldn't do shit to help me. I tried to report my car as stolen but the police would hear nothing of it. I had to pay a ransom to the thieves to get my car back, and the towing inspector refused to help as well. Being as the thieves had plenty of experience (and assistance) in the court system you can imagine how well that went as well...

Basically I would have much rather had a ticket. A ticket doesn't do front end damage to my car or force me to go through hell trying to pursue some semblance of justice. I've fought unjust traffic tickets before (and won) but the city wouldn't help me when my car was stolen by crooked bastards.

Re: All large unions are corrupt.End public unions

[GLMDesigns]

Which Republican was that? The same one that wanted to tax large bottles of soda, funds anti-gun legislation? That one? Yeah. Bloomberg is really popular among Republican circles.

Re:Power WILL be abused

[Zak3056]

On the one hand, I kinda agree with you. Let the cops issue whatever tickets they want, and let it be hashed out in the courts. It's no different from letting anyone sue anyone else for anything, and letting it get hashed out in the courts.

The problem is that court costs (which, IIRC, were only assessed in the past if you LOST your hearing) are now assessed by many courts regardless of outcome. So you can go to court (time off work, misc expenses like fuel, parking, etc) and "win" your case and get the $50 ticket thrown out, and be assessed with $125 of court costs. You come out far worse off than had you just paid the phony ticket to begin with.

Note - all numbers above are rectally extracted, but do reflect relative reality in many municipalities.

Re:Government

[squiggleslash]

In fairness, that law change looks absurd on the face of it and I'm not surprised the officers writing tickets - and the drivers who voluntarily paid the fines didn't realize this.

The fact both sides, drivers and police, thought a parking violation had been committed hints the law is actually wrong here and probably should be changed back.