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Williamsburg cops on Sunday discovered a corpse in a car with banned tinted windows parked illegally at a fire hydrant for reportedly one week roughly 600 feet from the 90th Precinct stationhouse — a gruesome reminder of the NYPD's failure to enforce basic parking rules near their own command posts.
The police found the black Chevrolet sedan in front of a fire hydrant near the corner of Broadway and Lynch Street — less than one-10th of a mile from the front door of the stationhouse, which is co-located with the FDNY's 108th Ladder company on Union Street.
Video captured by Williamsburg News showed staff from the city’s Medical Examiner remove the body of a 61-year-old man from the vehicle, which had heavily-tinted windows, which are illegal in New York City, just like parking at a fire hydrant, raising questions about why the car went ignored. Both Williamsburg News and Williamsburg 365 reported the car had been there for at least a week.
The alarming discovery comes amid increasing pressure on the NYPD to crack down on illegal parking and to reform how it polices its own officers' parking behavior.
Streetsblog recently revealed that the Police Department rejected the Department of Investigation's recommendation that it eliminate so-called "self-enforcement zones" — areas around precinct houses where NYPD cops, not civilian traffic agents, enforce parking rules. This arrangement allows local cops to effectively condone illegal parking by their own peers, turning the streets around precinct houses into mazes of cars parked on sidewalks.
Cops eventually found the Chevrolet a few feet outside of the 90th Precinct’s "self-enforcement zone," which comprises parts of Meserole Street, Union Avenue, Montrose Avenue, and Broadway. That it was parked in front of a hydrant, with tinted windows, may have led a civilian traffic agent to conclude that the car belonged to a cop.
An NYPD spokesperson declined to say how long the car had long been parked there, saying an investigation is ongoing. The city’s medical examiner has not determined the cause of death.
Nolan Hicks is a longtime reporter in New York City, who focuses on investigative stories. He spent six years at The New York Post where his stories prompted the MTA to redesign parts of the Second Avenue Subway's East Harlem extension and helped uncover the LIRR overtime scandal. As a contributor to Curbed/New York Magazine, he dove into Amtrak's failing power grid, NJ Transit's reliability crisis and why it costs the MTA $100 million to put elevators into stations. He has also worked at the New York Daily News, Austin American-Statesman and San Antonio Express-News. He joined Streetsblog in January 2025.
"We shouldn’t be aiming to nudge a few percentage points in public opinion. Our goal should be to make freedom of mobility so compelling that people demand it."
