Canarsie residents, beware! Your police officers are some of the most reckless drivers in the city.
Streetsblog's ongoing investigation into the private driving habits of NYPD officers and employees revealed that far more than half of vehicles affiliated with the Foster Avenue stationhouse have multiple serious moving violations on their records — and nearly 80 percent of the cars had at least one camera-issued moving violation.
As we have been doing for weeks, we ran the plates on vehicles parked in "Police-only" parking or parked illegally with department-issued placards near the 69th Precinct stationhouse and found 43 such cars. Of them:
- 40 cars — 93 percent — had been ticketed at least once.
- 34 cars — or 79 percent — had received at least one serious camera violation, such as speeding or running a red light.
- 23 cars — or 53.5 percent — had received multiple serious moving violations.
That's pretty bad, but not as bad as the s-cop-law kings at the 120th Precinct in Staten Island, where Streetsblog found 74 percent of the officers' cars had been slapped with multiple serious moving violations. But the 69th Precinct's recidivism number is alarming. At 53.5 percent, 69th Precinct cops get camera violation tickets at nearly three times the rate of regular New Yorkers, Streetsblog's probe found.
And the 69th Precinct is still far worse than the citywide average. So far in this month-long series, Streetsblog has run the plates on 1,308 cars and found:
- 1,006 cars — or 77 percent — had been ticketed.
- 767 cars — or 58.6 percent — had received a camera-issued ticket for speeding or running a red light, the most serious moving violations.
- 498 cop cars — 38 percent — had multiple serious moving violations.
The investigation began last month after Mayor de Blasio announced that he wanted to build or lease more parking for police officers, who currently park on sidewalks or in other illegal areas thanks to their department-issued placards. The mayor's plan to get cop cars out of sight had a downside, however: studies show that city employees are far more likely to drive to work if they are know they have a reserved space waiting for them.
So if more cops are expected to drive to work as a result of the mayor's parking spot perk, we examined what kinds of drivers these officers are. The results — accessed through the Howsmydrivingny database of all parking and camera summonses — prove that the people sworn to protect our neighborhoods are often the very people from whom our neighborhoods need to be protected.
That includes a cop's car in Park Slope with 53 serious moving violations on his record, a cop on the Upper East Side with 41 serious moving violations, and scores of cops with double-digit moving violations.
The NYPD has not responded to repeated requests for information about whether it is tracking these repeat recidivists. A pending bill by Council Member Brad Lander would allow authorities to impound any vehicle with more than five camera-issued tickets in any 12-month period — and if that bill was law, many officers would not be able to drive to work, records show. Lander's bill would not exempt cops.
The rogues gallery at the 69th Precinct includes:
- One cop with 33 tickets total, including 14 serious violations — enough to get the car impounded under Lander's bill.
- One cop with nine serious moving violations — also enough to get the car impounded under Lander's bill.
- One cop with eight serious moving violations.
- One cop with six serious moving violations.
- Seven cops with four — one of whom had all four since Jan. 11, 2019.
- Seven cops with three — one of whom had all of them this year alone.
Here are some of the driving records in screenshots from Howsmydriving:
