Look out, placard-wielding city workers — the watchdog account dedicated to documenting every time you misuse your real or fake laminated, city-issued invitation to corruption is back from a two-day Twitter suspension.
The account, @placardabuse, announced on Tuesday that it had deleted a single tweet that had been flagged by the social media company, ending a lockout that began Sunday after a complaint by a person who apparently objected to being exposed as a privileged illegal parker.
Twitter had never revealed — neither to the watchdog account holders or to Streetsblog — how the tweet violated Twitter's rules, which bar publication of certain private information. The tweet in question did include a photo that showed the business card of NYPD Det. Kai Estwick, including his cellphone and his email address, but the card was left on the dashboard of a car that had been parked in a known placard cruising area on W. 55th Street — and its placement on the dashboard clearly did not constitute an attempt by the cardholder to keep his information private.
"It seems [Twitter] only received a complaint about the one tweet," the person who moderates @placardabuse told Streetsblog. "But why they view it as a violation of their policy, and why they can't explain it, is entirely beyond me."
Neither Estwick nor the NYPD have commented.
The keepers of the three-and-a-half-year-old placard abuse account — who remain anonymous because they have been threatened previously by NYPD officers — called the complaint “bogus” and “an effort to suppress documentation of wrongdoing.” And the watchdog account filed a counter-claim with the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau to ascertain whether Estwick or another NYPD employee misused his or her authority to get Twitter to temporarily block the account and censor the single tweet.
“We have asked the Internal Affairs Bureau and the Conflicts of Interest Board to investigate if anybody misused their position in an effort to suppress Constitutionally protected speech in an effort to avoid accountability," the account moderator told Streetsblog.
The return of @placardabuse means that whistleblowers can go back to what they do best: documenting illegal and dangerous parking by NYPD, FDNY, court officers, Department of Investigation officers and so many others who leave their cars wherever they want, thanks to a thin piece of plastic — so many of which are fabrications.
Since Tuesday morning's restoration, @placardabuse has been busy, retweeting other accounts' photos of placard corruption, as well as posting examples of how the placard class treats city streets in the Bronx, at a fire hydrant, in a no-stopping zone, and by cops of Brooklyn's 60th Precinct.
The watchdogs are obviously back.
