The Post reports that part of the budget cuts to the NYPD includes the 116-person NYPD unit enforcing abuses of placard parking. Yet another example of how the #DefundtheNYPD message did not really get through to elected officials. I don’t think this is what the movement’s leadership had in mind when they wanted to change how policing is done in the city. (Thanks to James for the heads up.)

I am also confused by this move, since I thought one key part of the plan rolled out last winter was to take the enforcement AWAY from NYPD officers, who never wanted to ticket their own, and to go digital. A quick scan of the new placards, which would become stickers, would tell DOT agents if the car was parked legally or not. Somehow that tech won’t be ready till 2021 (and it took local restaurants a month to figure out QR codes for ordering) but still, the NYPD clearly has no interest in enforcing any of these rules for its own officers. (See the posts below from the Placard Corruption Twitter account.)

Plus the other key part of the “crackdown” that wasn’t was to revoke expired and unwarranted placards. That would have cost the city exactly nothing. And this from The Post: “The de Blasio administration also admitted in response to questions submitted early Friday that officials had yanked just five placards from city employees under de Blasio’s three-strike policy for placard abuse, which was another highly touted policy announced in City Hall’s February 2019 crackdown.”

There are currently 125,000 placards in circulation in the city now, and most of them, it seems, park downtown.

Illegal window tints.

Parked illegally on the sidewalk.

And the @NYPD60Pct placard “accidentally” transposed numbers on the license plate (a trick we see often enough).#placardcorruption pic.twitter.com/NxmPkyjq2c

— placard corruption (@placardabuse) July 4, 2020

Illegal window tints.

Parked illegally on the sidewalk.

And the @NYPD60Pct placard “accidentally” transposed numbers on the license plate (a trick we see often enough).#placardcorruption pic.twitter.com/NxmPkyjq2c

— placard corruption (@placardabuse) July 4, 2020