Photo and caption by George The Atheist.

Elmhurst, Queens, New York

This was posted first on Queens Crap but it bears repeating on here. And it surely fits the title of this digital publication, because this is one of the most brazen acts of impunity ever photographed considering the brief chain of events in the course of 12 hours.

First by the NY Post:

City Council members overwhelmingly backed Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s plan to rein in widespread abuse of city-issued parking permits, approving all nine of his bills he put forward to crack down on placard abuse.

“Placard abuse is corruption,” Johnson told reporters ahead of the Council’s Tuesday vote. “We’ve tolerated it for years as one of those unchangeable facts in New York City, but those days are hopefully over.”

Tell me/us more, tell me/us more Cojo. And maybe with less trepidation this time.

Critics frequently complain the NYPD fails to crack down on placard abuse since cops are frequently spotted misusing them, but Johnson told reporters DOI’s involvement ensures NYPD will take the issue seriously.

“We wanted an outside check,” Johnson said. “Traffic enforcement agents who are supposed to be writing the summonses and tickets … don’t always do it because they are afraid of policing the police.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for both of those final comments by the speaker to manifest. Thanks to the ace photography of long time Queens Crap commentator and blogger George The Athiest:
Who:  The Columbia Association of the NYPD.
Where:  In Elmhurst on the Queens Boulevard south service road between the new Georgia Diner and Grand Avenue.
When:  Tuesday evening, November 26, 2019.
What:  Columbia Association police membership needs convenient and difficult to find on-street parking.
Why:  It seems that this membership has parking privileges that the rest of the citizenry does not.  

.  

Regular street parking cannot be found, so we
 drive up onto the sidewalk.  Nice.

All that’s needed is an official placard?

Apparently, the answer still is yes. But why would de Blasio’s NYPD do this so brazenly and arrogantly? Back to the NY Post:

Of the nine bills passed, all but one was approved unanimously.

However, five council members voted against a ban on city officials parking in bike and bus lanes, at bus stops, in crosswalks, on sidewalks and in front of fire hydrants.

So that’s how the NYPD will continue to get away with placard abuse, it’s transparent that during the writing of this bill some beneficial loopholes had to be placed (wonder who the furious five were). But come on now, to do this on the same day? They could have waited maybe a day or two to go back to their recidivist power tripping habits and parked all their cars in a nearby garage, since they and de Blasio are usually obsessed with optics.

But what’s more concerning is the shocking lack of local news media scrutiny, especially from the so called city blogs that publish anything bike related like Gothamist and Streetsblog. Maybe it’s Thanksgiving and all but this happened on Tuesday and I published it immediately on the night it occurred when it was messaged to me by GtheA. I even made sure to tag it on the Twitter to the intrepid placard corruption and they immediately like and retweeted it.

Usually when they do this it goes viral, but for some reason nothing came up, no likes no retweets and no subsequent news or even a request from the networks or papers. You think with all the coverage that bike commuting is getting, from new infrastructure and street redesigns to a rise in cycling advocacy that this didn’t get any follow up outrage from them.

It’s sour grapes but I don’t give a shit. The NYPD should not have been doing this and it sets a bad example to every citizen, young and old and will cause even more scofflaw behavior among them because they will have a reason to justify their illicit actions behind the wheel or even riding a bike or scooter. You think these cops on that evening would have thought for a second how their own illicit behavior here would set a pattern akin to the Broken Windows concept that they keep bringing up to enforce laws against lesser crimes.

And the fact that the aforementioned city blogs did not even pick up the scoop of this defiant abuse of power like they usually do whenever a biker gets hit by a car or a row of patrol cars block a bike lane is perplexing.

So to all these off-duty cops and the city blogs and also local corporate news media, what’s the fucking excuse?