Parking Placards

Michael Bloomberg (front row, fourth from right) with other mayors at the C40 Summit 

The Fort Greene Association has scored another victory in the fight against abuse of placarded parking, this time with some help from very high places.

Apparently, the retired NYPD officer who wrote the infamous, "We do not summons our own" rant in the UncivilServants.org comment section the other day never met Deputy Inspector Gin Yee, commanding officer of Manhattan's 5th Precinct. Inspector Yee tows his own. These photos were snapped on March 28th at approximately 1:20 pm. And here is the official memo that appears to have started the crackdown:

A certain sense of entitlement emerges in the UncivilServants comments section. Posted verbatim, no spelling check:

StreetFilms' Sean Clifford discovers that one of New York City government employees' favorite illegal parking spots in Downtown Brooklyn happens to be the last vestige of a historic road that played a significant role in the Revolutionary War. Alas, did George Washington's brave regiment of Marylanders sacrifice their lives at Gowanus so that government employees could park all over the sidewalk on Red Hook Lane?

Over at the site UncivilServants.org, the Transportation Alternatives project where readers can post photos of illegally parked cars sporting government-issued parking permits (like the court officers above who are comfortably ensconced in a no-parking zone on Crosby Street), there's a hot thread on whether showing the plate numbers of the vehicles constitutes a potentially dangerous invasion of privacy for police officers and others who are caught in violation. What do Streetsblog readers think?

A Chinatown tipster sent along these remarkable pictures yesterday of what seems to be an effort to cut down on placarded vehicles clogging the neighborhood's streets:

Word has it that the city is finally cracking down on uncivil servants' illegal parking privileges. Was this the final outrage that finally spurred the Bloomberg Administration to take action?

A chart illustrating the number who commute by auto to the Central Business District from Bruce Schaller's study for the Manhattan Institute, Battling Traffic: What New Yorkers Think About Road Pricing.