S-Cop-Laws: Bronx Cops Will Even Park All Over A Memorial … To Fallen Bronx Cops!

Not even the NYPD can stop the NYPD from illegal parking.

Cops in the 44th Precinct in the Highbridge section of the Bronx routinely clog up the public roadway in front of the the E. 169 Street station house, park illegally on sidewalks and even desecrate a public memorial to their own fallen brethren — but after Streetsblog asked top police officials about the problem, the situation was remedied.

For one day.

The latest tale of police parking abuse began in late June, when Streetsblog, responding to long-standing neighborhood complaints, found rampant illegal parking in area around the station house, including police officers’ vehicles blocking no fewer than seven fire hydrants and more than 70 vehicles backed onto sidewalks — despite ample legal parking in the area and a number of unoccupied spots on the precinct house roof.

Other officers had taken over the block of E. 169th Street in front of the station house, parking so many cars in the roadway itself that it was functionally closed to cyclists and drivers who don’t happen to have a badge.

Most shockingly, some officers were even desecrating a memorial to their fallen colleagues — officially known as the NYPD 44th Precinct Memorial Park — using its outer rim as a parking lot for their personal cars, squad cars and other vehicles.

Locals are frustrated at the way they are treated by officers who are supposed to protect and serve them.

“From 167th Street to 169th Street is basically now the 44th’s parking lot,” said Crystal Smith, who has lived across from the station house for 15 years. “They try to tow us, but they block hydrants all over.”

So we asked the NYPD’s official and amply staffed public information office about it. First, an agency spokesperson based at the 1 Police Plaza headquarters said that the NYPD needed more time to learn more about the situation at that specific precinct, though the transgressions of officers there have been covered previously.

The department spokesperson, who declined to provide a name, responded at 5:01 p.m. on Wednesday July 1, “The roadway at 169th Street from Jerome Avenue to Gerard Avenue is currently open.”

But when Streetsblog returned to the scene of the crimes 16 hours later, conditions had reverted to the normal absolute chaos.

Once again, E. 169th Street between Jerome and Gerard avenues was a police parking lot, impassible to local drivers and cyclists. And around a dozen cars had backed onto the exterior of the memorial park, with another layer of double-parked cars blocked one entrance. To enter the actual park, a Streetsblog reporter had to squeeze between cars.

Streetsblog tried to ask the precinct’s commanding officer why E. 169th Street was clogged again. An officer on duty in the lobby said the precinct’s commander, Deputy Inspector Joe Pulgarin, was unavailable. But the officer said her colleagues were going to move their cars to open the roadway.

Which they did … before other officers parked further up the block and effectively blocked off the street once again.

The moral seems to be that even the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information can’t get results.

But wait, there’s more …

This isn’t a one-day (or two- or three-day) story.

The fight to address parking by cops in the 44th Precinct is a long-running saga involving multiple city agencies trying to fix the problem and the NYPD failing to crack down on their own. The majority of city cops live in the suburbs, and they are given free parking around station houses, which encourages them to drive to their workplaces. That practice not only congests the streets around station houses, but adds danger to residents, Streetsblog has found in a 2019 series.

Years ago, the Department of City Planning identified “unpleasant and unsafe” parking around the precinct as something to be addressed in a redesign portions of Jerome Avenue and River Avenue that run under the elevated 4 train next to the station house.

Planners gave two recommendations to fix the area: either close a block to create an extended plaza and parking area for cops or convert the (now effectively closed) block of E. 169th Street to a one-way street with angled parking on the other side. Planners also suggested redesigns to reduce pedestrian crossing distances around the precinct house.

The city followed neither recommendation. It did add raised traffic islands with metal bollards blocking off parking in some areas under the elevated train across from the side of the precinct house. Those bollards worked, and areas that were once clogged with NYPD cars were made safer for everyday New Yorkers.

Here’s the area in 2024, looking south on River Avenue, just south of the intersection with Jerome Avenue:

And here’s the same area in 2026, after the Department of Transportation figured out how to keep cops out:

But then the renovations stopped. East 169th Street remains a designated two-day street that is functionally an expanded NYPD parking lot.

Smith, the local resident, noted that a private parking lot around the corner is never more than halfway full. The local community board begged the NYPD to buy such a lot in 2021, calling parking on streets around the precinct “an enormous issue.”

The NYPD declined to buy a local lot at the time, citing “fiscal constraints.”

Instead, officers continue to steal the sidewalk around the perimeter of the station house. They back their cars onto sidewalks on surrounding streets and the edges of the memorial park. They double- and even triple-park on E. 169th Street and they routinely park in striped no-parking zones around the corner on their side of Jerome Avenue, where no bollards have been put in place and a “self-enforcement zone” leaves the NYPD in charge of policing their own police parking.

These zones are common around precinct houses throughout the city. The department prohibits traffic agents from writing tickets inside these zones, instead insisting that police officers will police themselves. The Department of Investigation recommended ending the practice last year, but top NYPD brass refused to do so.

Streetsblog’s June visit to the 44th Precinct suggested that there’s little self-enforcement going on in the zone. In addition to the illegal parking, 15 vehicles had bent, covered or altered plates that were obviously illegal.

Five vehicles with a rear New York plate had no visible front plate; one vehicle, a white Acura with an NYPD vest on the dash, had no license plates whatsoever. Another vehicle had a plate cover and two vehicles had NYPD parking permits on which officers had penciled in two license plates to share the perks of the placard.

And of those 80 cars parked legally in NYPD parking or illegally with a placard, more than half had been nabbed for racing through a city school zone at least once. And 33 cars — or 41 percent — had multiple speed-camera violations. Twelve cops had 10 or more automated enforcement tickets for reckless driving in school zones or running red lights, Streetsblog found.

Across from the precinct house is the memorial park on a former traffic triangle bounded by E. 169th Street, Jerome Avenue and Gerard Avenue. In March, the precinct holds outdoor ceremonies in honor of Officer Sean McDonald, a 26-year-old who was fatally shot while responding to a robbery in 1994. The NYPD clears the memorial park and surrounding streets of cars each year, and officers march in their dress uniforms behind others bearing bagpipes and flags.

Names have been added to the plaque since McDonald was killed. Dedicated in November 2000, it now lists three officers who died in the line of duty and is surrounded by a small mulch planter, a large magnolia tree, a wooden bench, and three more trees — two hornbeams and a Japanese cherry.

But on days where they aren’t honoring their fallen colleagues, officers turn the perimeter of the memorial into one more expanded parking lot. When Streetsblog visited the first time, three rows of parked cars hid the commemorative plaque from those entering the precinct.

The park is maintained by the Parks Department but barely mentioned on the agency’s website. Streetsblog could only find it referenced on this obscure page about permitted sites for metal detecting in The Bronx.

The Department of City Planning declined to comment, pointing to its previous studies of the area, and the Department of Transportation did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

The NYPD denied that there was a problem around the precinct.

“Officers have been instructed to keep crosswalks and sidewalks clear for pedestrian use and self-enforcement is conducted at the precinct,” a spokesperson wrote, adding “precinct personnel conduct enforcement in the self-enforcement zone.”

Streetsblog emailed the NYPD again to ask why the road was closed off less than 24 hours after the spokesperson’s office claimed it was open. The office did not respond to the follow-up email.