Today’s installment of Street Cheats takes us to Downtown Brooklyn, where city workers are using a rehabbed Cadman Plaza as their personal parking lot and NYPD has ceded Red Hook Lane sidewalks to government employees and other space hogging randos.
The section of Cadman Plaza pictured above is next to Brooklyn Borough Hall. You might remember that the public recently paid $11 million to resurface the plaza after years of vehicular abuse during the Marty Markowitz era. The status quo continues under Markowitz successor Eric Adams.
A couple of blocks east, our tipster has waged a months-long battle to prod the 84th Precinct to get cars off the sidewalk on Red Hook Lane:
“I have been reporting it to 311 for almost a year and NYPD closes my complaints with no action,” he writes. “Multiple vehicles are parking illegally on the sidewalk every weekday. This includes work trucks, private vehicles, city vehicles with placards (which do not allow sidewalk parking), and private vehicles with fake or illegal placards.”
This location is around the corner from the car-clogged Livingston Street bus lane, where NYPD looks the other way as illegally parked drivers force thousands of bus riders to sit in traffic.
Tired of Street Cheats stealing public space where you are? Send your photos to tips@streetsblog.org, and follow along as we map NYC placard abuse.
