NYPD Falsified Placard Abuse Enforcement, Council Members Say

NEW YORK CITY — NYPD officers failed to show up time-and-again to calls about illegal parking and placard abuse, despite claiming they did, according to a bombshell letter by City Council leaders.

Investigators found cops did not properly respond to 72 percent of 311 calls about illegal parking, the letter states.

Cops didn't show up at all to the remaining 28 percent of calls, but claimed they did and marked them as resolved, according to the letter.

Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who sent the letter to NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea on Tuesday, said illegal parking and placard abuse are serious safety issues.

"Falsifying responses to parking complaints is dangerous and betrays the public trust," he tweeted.

"With traffic fatalities at their highest point in nearly a decade, illegal parking violations must be taken seriously," he said in a further statement. "That’s why the NYC Council Oversight and Investigations Division conducted its own field investigation, and why we are asking the NYPD to respond to specific incidents in which 311 complaints for placard abuse were apparently not responded to appropriately."

Placard abuse by government workers is a perennial frustration for watchdogs.

Abuse is widespread — there is even a Twitter account that provides near-hourly instances of fraud and violations — but Mayor Bill de Blasio's and NYPD officials' promised crackdowns have failed to curb the problem.

Johnson's letter — which was also signed by prominent Council Members Vanessa Gibson and Ydanis Rodriguez — notes his investigators found instances in which NYPD officers "impressively" and "implausibly" claimed less than a five-minute response time for more than 5,000 illegal parking and placard cases this year. The response times, at best, don't indicate thorough investigations, they wrote.

"Furthermore, the less-than-five-minute response times with respect to placard abuse are particularly surprising given that the Administration acknowledged in September 2020 that placard abuse enforcement was not a “focus” during the pandemic," the letter states.

The council members requested the NYPD investigate 14 instances in which officers said they showed up to a complaint, but weren't observed actually showing up.

"We are in receipt of the letter and are currently reviewing it," an NYPD spokesperson told Patch in an email.

Letter to Police Commissioner Shea Re 311 Complaints by Matt Troutman on Scribd