Push Grows To Move Parking Enforcement From NYPD To DOT
Local community boards are increasingly demanding that the Department of Transportation regain responsibility for enforcing illegal parking on the grounds that the NYPD has failed to prioritize the importance of street safety.
On April 8, Manhattan Community Board 6 and Brooklyn Community Board 6 voted separately to return the authority to DOT, which handled parking tickets until 1996. The Brooklyn board started the push in March.
“We see that all the time that the city is trying to work around the fact that there’s a lack of parking enforcement and that there’s some abuses of power with parking enforcement that we hope would be resolved with it moving to another department,” Jason Froimowitz, the chair of the Manhattan board’s transportation committee, told Streetsblog.
Brooklyn CB6’s resolution passed without any opposition.
Other boards have resolutions in the pipeline. Brooklyn CB2’s transportation committee, for example, passed the resolution unanimously on April 9.
The push stems from locals’ frustration with the status quo. Brooklyn CB6, for example, passed its resolution during a discussion about the need for more loading zones.
Froimowitz said illegal parking isn’t just a minor nuisance. Drivers who park in bus lanes slow down thousands of people’s commutes. Drivers who block entrances to hospital emergency rooms could prevent a dying person from getting life-saving treatment.
“Enforcement is not meeting the needs of our city’s population,” he said. “We’re constantly trying to work around the fact that there’s a lack of enforcement.”
Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani shifted traffic enforcement from DOT to the NYPD in 1996 as part of a larger government reorganization. The merger switched their uniforms from brown to blue and was, in part, meant to emphasize their image as members of law enforcement. Traffic enforcement agents are part of the NYPD, but are civilian employees and not peace officers, meaning they do not carry guns.
Cops have a well-documented aversion to following parking rules themselves. In fact, the problem is so well-known that, under President Biden, the U.S. Department of Justice threatened to sue the NYPD over sidewalk parking in 2024, claiming that the common practice violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“NYPD vehicles and the personal vehicles of NYPD employees frequently obstruct sidewalks and crosswalks in the vicinity of NYPD precincts,” the letter stated. It added that means “the city’s pedestrian grid is not readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities.”
Reformers pushed to separate the police from traffic enforcement at the height of the nation’s racial reckoning in 2020. Attorney General Letitia James endorsed the campaign, but it fizzled out like so many other reforms proposed during the era. Members of the police department’s traffic enforcement force and its union opposed the move, claiming it would subject more agents to insults and physical assaults.
Still, that sentiment never fully faded, especially as more New Yorkers tire of the police department’s lack of parking enforcement. Froimowitz said the push could fit into the mayor’s rethinking of how city government works.
As a candidate, Mamdani ran on shifting the city’s mental health emergency response system from the NYPD to social workers. He moved closer to making this a reality in March by creating the Office of Community Safety, although it falls short of a full-fledged agency. And, just on April 7, the administration announced the creation of a new office at DOT to manage curbside lanes.
“Parking is a ripe opportunity for a sort of a revisit and a reprioritization,” Froimowitz said. “In fairness to the NYPD, they do have complicated jobs. … I can understand [why] parking enforcement can at times be on the lower end of their overall department priorities.”
The idea to shift – or expand – parking enforcement is already on the Mamdani administration’s mind. In March, the Department of Finance proposed authorizing campus police officers at a Brooklyn university hospital to issue parking tickets, since illegal parking around the hospital is so rampant, with offenders often running wild.
One expert told Streetsblog that the police department’s lack of focus on parking enforcement points to funding or resource allocation problems.
“If we’re worried about enforcement, we need to fund it. We need it to be properly resourced,” said Rachel Weinberger, research and strategy director at the Regional Plan Association.
There’s a larger issue, of course; if it were easy to get around the whole city without cars, there would be no need for parking spots, Weinberger said.
But community boards are making it clear they don’t want a different agency to issue parking tickets. They aren’t satisfied with the status quo of cars routinely blocking bus and bike lanes and they hope elected officials see this organic, bottom-up push.
“Community boards are advisory; we don’t have a lot of hard power,” said Mandi Spishak-Thomas, a member of Manhattan CB6. “But I do think that oftentimes when things get passed at the community board level, it gets elevated to the city council level and then important conversations start happening that then eventually turn into legislation.”
Neither City Hall nor DOT responded to Streetsblog’s repeated requests for comment on the push.
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