City paid consulting firm to manipulate the violence statistics at Rikers Island with shady and unethical tech methods

 

Propublica

In April 2017, partners from McKinsey & Company sent a confidential final report to the New York City corrections commissioner. They had spent almost three years leading an unusual project for a white-shoe corporate consulting firm like McKinsey: Attempting to stem the tide of inmate brawls, gang slashings and assaults by guards that threatened to overwhelm the jail complex on Rikers Island.

The report recounted that McKinsey had tested its new anti-violence strategy in what the firm called “Restart” housing units at Rikers. The results were striking. Violence had dropped more than 50% in the Restart facilities, the McKinsey partners wrote.

The number was bogus. Jail officials and McKinsey consultants had jointly rigged the Restart program in its earliest phase to all but guarantee there would be few violent episodes, according to documents and interviews. They stacked the units with inmates they believed to be compliant and unlikely to get into fights or to attack staff.

Publicly, McKinsey and top corrections officials touted the drop in violence in these units as an early sign of their project’s success — without disclosing that they had tilted the scale in favor of that result. After McKinsey handed off the inmate selection process, about a year into the firm’s work at Rikers, jail officials continued to manipulate the population of the Restart units to keep their violence numbers low.

In October of this year, the New York City Council voted to approve Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to close Rikers. The vote occurred during the same month that a federal monitor, appointed by a court to oversee reform at Rikers, revealed that violence by jail guards there continues to worsen. Overall, using the metrics employed by McKinsey, jailhouse violence has risen nearly 50% since the firm began its assignment.

The full story of how New York City came to pay McKinsey $27.5 million only to abandon many of the firm’s recommendations and decide to shut Rikers has never been told. A ProPublica investigation, based on interviews with 36 people, half of whom worked directly on the project, as well as more than 10,000 pages of project documents, internal emails and other records, reveals that problems dogged the project at every stage.

Among the issues that plagued the project: McKinsey, which had never before advised a jail or prison system, made data errors that further undercut the results it reported from Restart units. The firm also persuaded the Department of Correction to spend millions on the sorts of advanced data analytics favored by McKinsey’s corporate clients. The department never ended up using many of the those data products, some of which simply did not work very well.

What happened at Rikers is a cautionary tale of a public-sector consulting boom that has emerged over the past decade. In recent years, government agencies across the United States have entrusted management consultants with more and more facets of public administration, from designing school systems to shaping Medicaid policy. Public-sector consulting in North America is a more than $9 billion industry, with an average yearly growth rate of about half a billion dollars, according to ALM Intelligence, which monitors the consulting business. McKinsey was anxious to expand into a potentially lucrative branch of public-sector work, corrections consulting, according to a former McKinsey consultant who worked on the project.

As I am sure you all are aware, and this is mostly directed to the residents of Kew Gardens, Mott Haven, Boerum Hill and Chinatown, this report was used to justify closing Rikers. 

In the future, who will they contract to study and manipulate the data after the four borough tower jails get built?

Con Edison will gouge New York residents electric and gas bills for the next three years

Gothamist


Con Edison, the privately owned utility company that theoretically powers our city, has reportedly resolved to raise rates beginning January 1: Under the proposal, electric would go up 13 percent over the next three years, while gas would jump an astounding 25 percent. Hm well, at least you know you're getting solid and uniformly reliable service for all those extra dollars you're paying out; at least you know that this added, unavoidable expenditure will be Worth It in the long run!

Here is a breakdown of the average rate hikes, which would vary somewhat depending on customers' electricity and gas consumption. Most of you would be looking at a roughly 4.2% rise in 2020, followed by a 4.7% increase in 2021, and a 4% bump in your electric bills for 2022. As for gas, the average bill would jump 7.5% in 2020, 8.8% in 2021, and 7.2% in 2022.

Many people are displeased with this scheme, which stands to make already burdensome monthly payments significantly more expensive. AARP has already filed its grievances with the state Public Service Commission, pointing out that, as it stands, "tens of thousands" of customers find themselves unable to pay their utility bills and see their services cut every year.

"We think it’s an unfair rate hike,” AARP lobbyist Bill Ferris told the NY Daily News: “We have a problem in New York State with energy affordability.” With everything affordability, some would say!

Hotel owners are profiting off of the homeless crisis

NY Daily News

Owners of dozens of recently-built homeless hotels are saving millions of dollars on city taxes through an obscure rebate program that allowed them to hold on to $12.5 million in the 2018-2019 tax cycle.

Of the owners benefiting from the tax break — known as the Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program — the biggest winners include Sam Chang, Harshad Patel and Riverbrook Equities, according to a New York Hotel Trades Council analysis obtained and vetted by the Daily News.

Chang, for example, has built 49 hotels since 2006.

Of those, 14 have housed the homeless. Five have received ICAP rebates and saved approximately $2.3 million on their 2018-2019 tax bills, city records show.

Chang, who still retains ownership in one of the hotels, the Holiday Inn JFK, saved $791,323 in taxes for that property during the last tax cycle.

In all, 44 homeless hotels appear to have received both the ICAP rebate and homeless subsidies within the past four years, city records show. There are a total of 151 hotels that get ICAP rebates. From 2015 to 2019, homeless hotels that got the rebates saved more than $30 million.

All the while, owners like Chang and other operators who get the tax rebates are getting paid by the city to house the homeless. That money is routed to the hotels through homeless service “management companies,” which get the money directly from the city.

A spokeswoman for Chang’s McSam Hotel Group said the company has done nothing wrong.

“McSam Hotel Group complies with New York City laws, rules and regulations in building hotels. We never build hotels with the intent of housing homeless persons," spokeswoman Lisa Linden said. 

"McSam Hotel Group makes no decisions regarding whether homeless persons are housed in hotels. The management companies make those decisions.”

Harshad Patel said the rebate fulfills its mission of creating jobs and that critics are ignoring the big picture.

“It’s the only reason we are building,” he said. "We have a lot of expenses.”

The city projects it will spend $2.1 billion overall on tackling the homelessness crisis in 2020. In 2018, $384 million went from city coffers to housing homeless people in hotels. Less clear is how much of the city’s homeless budget is going specifically to hotels that already receive the ICAP rebate.

Whatever the cost, affordable housing advocates believe it’s a waste of taxpayer money.

“What the city needs to do is build housing to house the homeless,” said Cea Weaver, Housing Justice for All’s campaign coordinator. “It’s a better use of our resources. It’s better than paying hotel owners twice.”

Multi-family homes will be destroyed for mega tower.

LIC Post

Three more century-old homes in Long Island City are slated for demolition.

The multi-family homes are all located on the same block – one at 23-10 45th Ave. and two at 45-03 and 45-07 23rd Street.

The demolitions will clear the way for the construction of a 45-story building near the southeast corner of 23rd Street and 45th Avenue in the heart of Court Square.

Development Site

Permits for the demolitions were filed Nov. 8. A total of seven multi-family homes on the block are in the process of being torn down to make way for the new high-rise.
The addresses of the buildings to be bulldozed extend from 23-10 to 23-16 45th Ave., and 45-03 to 45-09 23rd St.

The new project, however, will not cover the corner two-story building currently at 45-01 23rd St. The developer noted in city filings that attempts to purchase the property and its development rights from the owner were unsuccessful

Homeless shelter landlord plans to build school next to Pan American Hotel

Jackson Heights Post

The owner of the homeless shelter at the former Pan American hotel has filed plans to build a school on an adjacent site, according to building records.

David Levitan, one of the largest homeless shelter landlords in the city, has filed plans with the Department of Buildings to construct a 4-story school at 79-20 Queens Blvd in Elmhurst, on the lot directly next to the 79-00 Queens Blvd. shelter that he also owns.

Levitan, who is listed as the property owner on record, filed the plans on Nov. 22 to build the 39,764-square-foot school.

The school will house at least 18 classrooms, as well as multiple science labs, a music room, a fine arts room, a media lab, a teachers lounge, a cafeteria and kitchen, a rooftop play area and several offices, according to the plans.

The building will reach 53 feet in height, according to building plans. The plan makes no mention of whether the school will be public or privately run.

The school will sit next to the shelter, as Levitan bought a number of properties along the strip.
Levitan bought three sites — 79-20 Queens Blvd., 79-14 Queens Blvd. and 79-13 51st Ave. — next to the former hotel for $3,750,000 in April 2014, months after he brought the hotel site for $23,100,000 in January 2014, according to city records. He bought each lot from Panamendel Corp.

Wow. Apparently, with over tens of thousands of homeless children attending school, something like this was inevitable. The tale of two cities continues...

Middle Village tops in dog plops complaints

Ridgewood Post

Middle Village has a shituation on its hands — the neighborhood has the highest number of poop complaints in the city, according to a newly released study.

The number of complaints in Middle Village increased by a shocking 205 percent from 20 complaints in 2017 to 61 complaints in 2018. The neighborhood has had 86 complaints or 57.7 complaints per 10,000 households so far this year, according to a Renthop study which analyzed 311 data.

Its runner-up, Westchester-Union Port in the Bronx, is far behind with just 19 complaints or 21.6 complaints per 10,000 households for the year to date.

Dog-owners in Maspeth also have been failing to pick up after their furry friends–based on the number of complaints.

Maspeth comes in at number three on the list of the most poop-filled neighborhoods across the city. It has had 20 311 complaints or 18.8 complaints per 10,000 households for people not picking up after their dogs this year, according to the study.

de Blasio sent homeless families to live in squalid homes in New Jersey that were run by slumlords

NY Post

Homeless New Yorkers moved to New Jersey under a controversial city program were left living in squalor at the mercy of exploitative landlords, a damning new report from the Department of Investigation says.

It’s the latest blow suffered by City Hall’s controversial Special One-Time Assistance program, which provides families in New York’s maligned shelter system a year’s worth of rent if they relocate outside of the five boroughs.
“The SOTA program was designed to help New York families break the cycle of homelessness and set them on the path to achieve stable, affordable housing,” said DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett. 

“However, DOI’s investigation has found the promise of the program is not being fulfilled.
“Instead, because of a lack of proper oversight and poorly designed paperwork, our investigation showed some SOTA families placed in housing outside of New York City were living in squalor under the roofs of unscrupulous landlords.”
The laundry list of hardships SOTA participants found themselves facing suggests some went from the frying pan to the fire.
One apartment’s temperature was a chilly 42.6 degrees thanks to a defective boiler.
Another home was infested with insects and vermin — and also lacked heat.
A third property was deemed suitable despite having 52 open violations in 2018.
But the owners of those properties, the report found, “collected tens-of-thousands of dollars in rental payments upfront from the City to provide these sub-par conditions with little risk of accountability for their actions.”

The de Blasio administration has spent $89 million since the SOTA program’s inception to relocate roughly 5,000 families, according to an investigation published by the New York Post in October. Nearly 1,200 of the families landed in Newark, which is New Jersey’s largest city and among its poorest.
Officials in the city filed a lawsuit in federal court there Monday, accusing New York City Hall of dumping the Big Apple’s homeless on the other side of the Hudson River and asking a court to stop the practice.

Chirlane McCray's ThriveNYC program shuns the homeless

NY Post


The head of first lady Chirlane McCray’s embattled mental health program, ThriveNYC, claimed that it doesn’t have an abnormally high staff turnover rate — even though the plan’s own data says it’s 40 percent.
“I don’t think our attrition rate or turnover rate is higher than most city agencies,” Thrive director Susan Herman said at a Bronx press conference Thursday announcing the program’s expansion into 13 city libraries.
The city tracks its employees using a “separation rate” that includes retirement as well as firings and departures. From 2008 through 2017, the average separation rate for NYC government staff hovered around 7 percent.
The Administration for Children’s Services, which struggles to keep employees in jobs handling cases of abused children, had a 10 percent turnover rate between 2014 and 2017.
The Post reported last week that the average time a staffer at the $1 billion ThriveNYC program stayed in their position since the program started in 2015 is just 10.5 months, despite generous average pay of $104,000, according to program data obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request.
A ThriveNYC spokeswoman pointed out that if new staff who were added when the program opened a dedicated office in January are not taken into account, the average tenure jumps to 18 months. That’s still nearly half as long as the average 36 months ACS workers stay in their jobs.
McCray and Herman were at the Bronx Library Center announcing a new initiative called “Spaces to Thrive” that will provide mental health workshops in libraries, a dedicated bookshelf on the subject, and a public information campaign.
But the $45,000-a-year Spaces to Thrive initiative won’t include any outreach to the homeless who often seek shelter in public libraries.

 Yeah, I know this story is about Chirlie's overpaid aides doing narrative control about the scandalous Thrive program but the last line here deserves more attention.

Mayor Big Slow finally shows up to South Ozone Park to assess waste water damage

CBS New York I am here now he says. Idiot.

D.E.P. immediately blames 300 homeowners for the rivers of feces in their basements

NBC New York

New York City residents are dealing with awful and vomit-inducing conditions days after a sewer backup forced them to leave their homes. Officials say the disruption pushed human waste into about 300 homes in Jamaica, Queens.

They think cooking grease poured down the drain might be the culprit. The city’s water agency says drinking water is safe and unaffected.

Cynthia McKenzie said she woke up around 3 a.m. Saturday to an odor she thought was a gas leak, only to realize that sewage water was rushing into her basement.

“When you open it, it just smells,” she said. “It makes you want to vomit. We have to pack up all the clothes.” 

 Raw sewage. There were worms coming out of the toilet. Sludge. Feces. All kinds of stuff," said South Ozone Park resident Gwen McElroy.

Why does the city (mainly the D.E.P.) think the residents are at fault and are sticking with that theory before they actually find the cause? This preemptive determination smells shittier than the stench and the gallons of biological waste they are hosing back out.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal energy plan for public housing will leave tenants hanging longer for heat and hot water

Progress New York

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14) has unveiled a green “New Deal” to “invest” up to $180 billion over ten (10) years in America’s public housing stock. The plan, unveiled two weeks ago, would offer public housing residents jobs in addition to funding capital repairs that have long been ignored by the Government. A central focus of the plan aims to reduce the carbon footprint of public housing, according to a report moved by the news Web site CityLab.

But there are concerns over the plan, according to public housing residents, who are advocating for a plan to fully-fund the Local public housing agency in New York City.

Although residents of public housing in New York City face immediate public health crises, like exposure to toxic mold and poisonous lead paint, high levels of lead in drinking water, and lack of adequate heat in the winter, U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s green “New Deal” plan makes residents wait ten (10) years for full-funding, but that’s only after her plan becomes law and takes affect, something that is not assured.

In recent days, surrogates for U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez have bristled whenever critics have noted that the green “New Deal” plan ignores the current the public health crises facing public housing residents. (On a recent Facebook post, U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s supporters attacked a grassroots advocacy group for highlighting shortcomings in the green “New Deal” plan. A member of thegrassroots advocacy group is a staff member of Progress New York.) When coupled with the fact that U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s legislative proposal ignores the stated plan by Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-New York City) to put one-third (1/3) of public housing into the hands of private landlords, there appears to be no urgency to the green “New Deal” plan. The Mayor’s intention is to demolish public housing apartments in order to rezone empty lots for 70-30 luxury rental buildings and to sell air rights owned by the Local public housing agency, the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA. Media reports have raised concerns about increased rent hikes, rescreenings, and higher eviction rates from the centerpiece to the Mayor’s plan, known as the Rental Assistance Demonstration, or RAD.
 
But the conditional nature of, and the years of waiting required by, U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s green “New Deal” plan mean that the dangers public housing residents face as a result of public health crises and Mayor de Blasio’ on plans for NYCHA will not be countered by the ambitious environmental bill.

NYCHAleaks

Progress New York


Progress New York has obtained data, which reportedly reveals which public housing developments owned by the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, will be put into the hands of private landlords. In the interest of the public’s right to know, Progress New York has released this information.

The information was received from an anonymous source, who was motivated to share the information, in order for the public to know details about the privatisations being planned by the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-New York City).

According to the information, the de Blasio administration plans to transfer 59,216 public housing apartments to private landlords. The information refers to the programme under which this transfer of public housing assets would take place as PACT, an Orwellian acronym for Permanent 

Affordability Commitment Together. PACT was an Agency code name used to replace Rental Assistance Demonstration, or RAD, the official programme of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has steadily gained a negative connotation due to negative reports of rent increases, civil rights violations, and evictions.

Another Orwellian term used by the Agency, Build to Preserve, is a code name that replaces infill development, which has also gained a negative connotation, particularly during the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R-New York City), who had proposed the real estate development of children’s playgrounds, parking lots, and lawns and gardens. Under Build to Preserve, 3,694 apartments were slated to be constructed as infill development. According to the information obtained by Progress New York, the Build to Preserve plans were accurate as of May 2019.
 
According to a review of the information, the information was last updated in mid-2019, and it identifies which, of the 324 NYCHA public housing developments, are slated for some form of privatisation. The information indicates that 127 NYCHA public housing developments face transfer to private landlords under PACT/RAD.

Backed up sewer line inundates South Jamaica homes with crappy water and the city is slow to help

NY Daily News
 

Queens residents driven from their homes by a clogged sewer line demanded answers Sunday from city officials who said they weren’t sure when the problem would be fixed.

A jam in a sewer line serving 300 homes in a swath of South Jamaica just north of Kennedy Airport backed up raw, fetid sewage into about 80 residences on Saturday.

Officials from the Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the city sewer system, said they weren’t sure when flooded-out residents could return.

“We are alive and OK but everything is gone,” said Sani Lakudi, 50, an Uber driver who lives in the neighborhood. “My TV, printer, computer — they are ruined. We stayed up all night pumping water. We had to do what we had to do or the water would have destroyed everything.”

“Nobody from the city has come to me,” Lakudi added. “We are doing all the work ourselves.”

Streets were blocked off, including 133rd Ave. near Inwood St., as crews pumped out of the blocked sewer to keep the smelly, stinking waste from pouring back into homes across the 15-square block area affected by the crisis.

Residents were asked to turn off their heat, hot water and electricity while the problem was addressed.

DEP spokesman Edward Timbers said crews worked overnight to “pump around” a blockage in the neighborhood’s main sewer conduit near 150th St and Rockaway Blvd.

City officials on Saturday said that 300 homes were affected by the sewage backup. On Sunday, Timbers said that figure was the total number of residences served by the affected sewer line, and that only about 80 of them were flooded.

“We don’t know when it will be fixed,” said Timbers. “People should contact their home insurance carrier. The DEP has been helping people fill out claim forms against the city.”

A bypass system to prevent further basement flooding was to be finished by Sunday evening, Timbers said.

Staten Island Amazon warehouse workers demand fulfillment benefits, services and safety provisions

NY Post

Workers at Amazon’s Staten Island packing facility say Jeff Bezos deserves a lump of coal in his stocking for running roughshod over them, especially during the busy holiday season.

Over a hundred Amazon workers and their supporters gathered outside the facility on Monday to protest working conditions that they say only worsen as the e-tailing giant gears up to deliver a rush of packages ahead of Christmas and Hanukkah.

The workers, who gathered outside the warehouse around 5:30 p.m., carried signs, chanted slogans and demanded a manager emerge from the building to accept a petition signed by 600 people — and addressed to Amazon chief executive Bezos, tied for richest man in the world with Bill Gates.

Their petition demands longer work breaks and more dedicated MTA buses to the far-flung facility. It also protests newly released injury data showing that the rate of worker injury at the facility is three times higher than similar warehouse work.

“It has become clear that our safety is a secondary concern in your eyes, lagging far behind line speed,” the petition said. “There are only weak plans in place to prevent more pain, more injuries, and more deaths as we enter the hardest time of the year,” the letter said.

Amazon’s eyebrow-raising injury rates at the warehouse, which opened in 2018, where released Monday by labor advocacy group Make the Road New York based on Amazon’s own submissions to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Among the injuries reported were sprains and strains from pushing, pulling and lifting machinery and merchandise.

And because the facility is kept at an overly warm temperature, workers sometimes pass out from overheating, said Frank Kearl, staff attorney for Make the Road.

“There are serious structural problems in the way that facility is operating,” Kearl said.

Wheels are coming off in Northeast Queens crime wave

Bayside Patch

  A borough-wide spike in tire and rim thefts is hitting northeast Queens hard, according to the police.
The NYPD's 111th precinct, which covers a region of northeast Queens that includes Bayside and 

Douglaston, has gotten reports of 37 such thefts so far this year, up from 16 last year.
In 2017, there were 43 thefts by this time of the year, precinct officers say.

 
The spike prompted the precinct to add staff to its midnight shift, police wrote in a Facebook post

Bigoted graffiti found on sidewalks, fences and trees in Lindenwood

 

NY Post


A hateful vandal scrawled “F–K WHITE PEOPLE” in front of a Queens home and defaced nearby trees and fences with other profane messages, police said Friday.
The spray-painted graffiti, written in black and underlined with red, was discovered on the sidewalk in front of a home on 151st Avenue near 81st Street in the neighborhood of Lindenwood on Thanksgiving morning, cops said.
Found on nearby trees were spray-painted messages reading “F–K WHITE,” and simply, “F–K,” police and witnesses told The Post.
The messages were discovered at around 4 a.m. and reported to police at around 10 a.m., according to authorities.
Nearby fences were also found defaced with graffiti that read: “I NEED P—Y ASAP,” and “ONE DAY I WILL COME BACK TO THIS AND SEE HOW SUCCESSFUL I AM!”
“It’s not safe. We’re afraid,” said Lina Bachour, 38, who lives at the home where the “F–K WHITE PEOPLE” graffiti was scrawled in front of.
It was not yet clear if Bachour or anyone else was specifically targeted.
Another neighbor, Barry Rachnowitz, 70, said that his part of his fence was spray-painted in red graffiti.
“This is horrible,” he said. “There are no words to share my disgust right now. It is definitely a hate-crime, especially what they wrote on the [sidewalk].”
Rachowitz added: “I can’t understand how someone can have so much hate in their heart towards a stranger … Hopefully the person will be caught and punished.”
Resident Anthony Carecchia, 20, said the vandalism was “very surprising to see.”
“You don’t expect something like this in this neighborhood,” he said, noting, “It’s a pretty diverse neighborhood, so I’m really surprised.”

Happy Thanksgiving

 Here's an obligatory picture of a turkey

  And less appetizing turkeys:

Class action lawsuit filed against city for shithole Hunters Point librarys' lack of ADA accessibility

 

 NY Post

The new $41.5 million Queens Public Library branch at Hunters Point, where design flaws have made it a target of critics since opening in September, could get even more expensive thanks to a new lawsuit demanding improvements to help disabled patrons.

In a class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court, disabilities advocates say that Queens Public Library violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to ensure that disabled patrons will have equal access to all parts of the new branch.

When the branch opened, a three-tiered fiction section only had a single staircase leading up to it and was unreachable by the building’s single elevator.

The plaintiffs, the Center for the Independence of the Disabled and a Queens woman with mobility issues, say disabled people are also unable to reach the branch’s rooftop terrace and a reading space on the children’s floor.

The plaintiffs are calling on the library to “swiftly” execute plans to remove barriers to equal access to areas within the Hunters Point branch.

The suit was filed just two months after the 32,000-square foot library was opened to the public — at which point library officials hailed it as a “stunning architectural marvel” and a “beacon of learning, literacy and culture.”

“The newly-built Hunters Point Library was designed and built with a total disregard for adults and children with mobility disabilities and in flagrant contempt of the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” the 21-page lawsuit states.

City council passes law to curb placard abuse

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.”

The package of bills would up the fine for illegal placard use — a rampant practice among city employees — from $250 to $500. It would require city employees to apply for placards and explain why they should be granted the permit.

The NYPD would also be required to conduct 50 targeted placard enforcement sweeps each week under the supervision of the city’s Department of Investigation.

Furthermore, city police would be tasked with maintaining an electronic database of all placards in circulation and tracking progress towards eliminating improper use of city parking permits.

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.”

Looks like someone missed a sweep on Queens Blvd on the night of the new legislation. Speaking of outside checks, how about compensating George the Atheist for his recent expose'.

 

NYPD fraternity group parks their cars on the sidewalk adjacent to bike lane.

George The Atheist


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.  

If the Queens Boulevard bike lanes are kept clear, as seen in these photos, why can't all drivers then park on the sidewalk like these off-duty cops?



No standing, unless you're privileged