The NYPD can take a little as 14 seconds to close parking complaints submitted through the city's 311 system — suggesting "inconsistent, and in some cases non-existent" enforcement of safety-related violations like blocked bike lanes, fire hydrants and travel lanes, a study found.
Researchers used AI to analyze 21 city-owned traffic surveillance cameras after submitting 558 illegal parking complaints to 311 over five days in April and found "a pattern of extremely rapid complaint closure" even as illegal parking persisted when the complaint was closed in more than 52 percent of instances.
Cops closed nearly one-third of complaints in less than eight minutes and 32 seconds, the study found — faster than the average response time to 911 calls for a "critical crime in progress," which includes shots fired and assaults with a weapon.
"The rapidity of these closures raises questions about the thoroughness of the NYPD's response to these complaints and suggests that many reports may be dismissed without proper on-site verification," wrote researchers Benjamin Arnav and Elif Ensari.
Of the 558 complaints, NYPD issued just 16 tickets — a rate of 2.87 percent. Complaints to 311 have an overall ticket issuance rate of 11.21 percent, the report said.
NYPD's explanations for closing complaints — "action was not necessary," cops "took action to fix the condition" or police "observed no evidence of the violation at that time" — were more often than not disproven by evidence on camera, the researchers found. Despite the slew of complaints, many locations saw hours of rampant illegal parking, often by delivery trucks turning travel lanes and no parking zones into "mobile logistics hubs" and "de facto parking lots."
"Our findings paint a picture of inconsistent, and in some cases non-existent, parking enforcement in New York City," Arnav and Ensari wrote. "The high rate of complaints closed while illegal parking was still occurring, combined with the low rate of ticket issuance, suggests a systemic failure in addressing this issue."
The findings mirror an award-winning 2021 Streetsblog investigation that exposed NYPD's unwillingness to enforce parking violations submitted to 311. NYPD's outrageously short response times to close complaints were implausible, former city officials told Streetsblog.
"As soon as you see something like that, I would be suspicious that it isn’t getting answered properly," one former high-ranking NYPD official said at the time. "Red flags should be going up."
In some cases, police have actually harassed and threatened members of the public for submitting complaints about illegal parking to 311. The city Conflicts of Interest Board even ruled that Officer Brendan Sullivan berated 311 complainant Paul Vogal with voicemails posing as a former romantic partner, breathing heavily and making "dolphin, seal and sheep noises."
"[Sullivan] sought to discourage a citizen from exercising his constitutional right to complain about government action," the board ruled.
In another instance of harassment, cops told Brooklyn resident Seth Friedman his "silly jobs" were "wasting our time."
A previous analysis conducted by Arnav found cops issued tickets to just 1.9 percent of more than 76,000 blocked bike lane complaints filed to 311 between 2016 and 2023.
The latest study by Arnav, an independent researcher, and Ensari, of NYU, makes clear that these complaints are far from silly — the 21 locations studied for the report were the site of two deaths, 257 injuries and 2,319 crashes within 50 meters dating back to 2014.
For the study, the pair programmed their AI to inform 311 when cars and trucks occupied no-parking areas in view of the cameras for over three minutes. The AI also identified when illegal parking persisted in instances where NYPD claimed the matter resolved but did not issue a ticket.
The study purports to be the "first-of-its-kind, systematic, large-scale analysis" of NYPD enforcement patterns.
"This is unsurprising to anyone who follows the condition of our streets, but it's great to have it documented again," said Jon Orcutt, a former city Department of Transportation official.
"It gets to the central absurdity of the street level conditions in New York City," added Orcutt. "One part of city government goes to great length to install bike lanes and bus lanes, and another virtually ensures that they're filled with illegally parked cars and trucks within a few days of their creation."
NYPD did not respond to a request for comment.
