Manhattan DA Revokes Parking Placard of Employee With Bent License Plate

Don’t get all bent out of shape.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office revoked an employee’s parking placard and opened an investigation into their conduct on Friday after Streetsblog asked about the employee’s comically creased license plate.

“We have revoked access to the vehicle and placard,” said Douglas Cohen, a spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney. “We are conducting a full investigation and will take appropriate disciplinary action.”

Last Wednesday, we found the employee’s car, a black 2013 Ford Edge SUV, parked on Mulberry Street — about two blocks away from the district attorney’s office and the county courthouse.

The car drew our attention because it displayed an official District Attorney placard and featured a rear license plate that someone — presumably the car’s owner — had folded horizontally in two places to obscure the plate’s first three letters. New York City drivers often deface and deform their license plates to evade automated cameras that issue speeding tickets and collect tolls.

We were unable to immediately identify the employee, and Cohen refused to provide their name or title. This raises the alarming possibility that the car’s driver is an actual prosecutor — who are usually on the other end of investigations into altered or missing license plates.

In 2024, the current Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg compared so-called “ghost cars” with fake or obscured plates to ghost guns, calling these illegal cars “a threat to our streets.” Months later, he emphasized that of these vehicles pose “a danger to Manhattan pedestrians, bikers, and drivers.”

City records show that the Ford Edge’s driver collected tickets for illegal driving and parking every few months between November 2023 and December 2025, when the tickets suddenly ceased. In other words: a vehicle that received 23 tickets over about two years — five bus lane tickets, eight speeding tickets and 10 parking tickets — suddenly stopped receiving tickets over the past nine months.

Streetsblog has spent years writing about the many placard-wielding government employees who abuse their powers to park illegally on our streets. Many of these employees also get away with obscured, defaced or covered license plates, even though it is often their own employers that have vowed to combat this problem.

Three years ago, for example, Streetsblog caught a former NYPD hostage negotiator and “hourly consultant” for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office parked with an official placard and a covered license plate. Within a week, the employee resigned from his consultant job while facing an disciplinary investigation.

We’ve also written about the untold number of vehicles parked illegally around police precincts, where the NYPD is allowed to “self-enforce” city parking rules. Very little self-enforcement actually happens — and despite the Department of Investigation’s recommendation that the NYPD end this practice, the police department quietly continued it while city pols looked the other way.

Streetsblog has filed a formal records request with the DA to determine the driver’s identity. In the meantime: Their New York license plate’s number is LBR2580 and their parking placard’s ID number is 31078. If you happen to know who this is, please get in touch.