Rogues’ Gallery of Street Cheats Endanger People Outside Inwood Park and Playground

Indian Road is a one-way two-block stub of a street that parallels Seaman Avenue in Inwood. Flanked by apartments and Inwood Hill Park, “the only ‘road’ in Manhattan” intersects with W. 218th Street at the northwest corner of the island.

The park, the residential buildings, and the narrowness of the street, which for most of its length has parking on both sides, all cue motorists to proceed with care. Nevertheless, drivers often punch the accelerator after rounding the corner from 218th, headed toward the park’s very popular playground at Indian Road’s southern terminus, where a sharp left onto W. 214th Street, which leads to Seaman, hinders visibility.

The park, the playground, and the blind corner are probably why there’s a no parking zone, about two car-lengths long, on the east side of Indian between W. 215th and W. 214th streets. It’s in an out-of-the-way spot, but lately more and more placard-holding government employees — and pretenders with fake placards and other pseudo-official-looking dashboard miscellanea — seem to have discovered it.

Here’s a sampling:

Since our tipster began documenting this surge of scofflaws a couple of months ago, NYPD parking enforcement was evident only once, when a disgruntled Street Cheat signaled loud and clear what he or she thinks of being penalized for stealing curb space: