Results tagged “parkingplacard”

Those NYPD-issued parking placards are GOLD, Jerry, pure GOLD! Although Mayor Bloomberg has cut back on the number of placards issued to city employees, drivers still cling to the precious perk, which lets them park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. On Wednesday CBS2 noticed funnyman Jerry Seinfeld getting dropped off at his studios on West 57th Street. His driver, retired narcotics officer Sgt. Timothy Gallagher, parked the car and escorted the Bee Movie star inside to work on his new program, The Marriage Ref. And the vehicle was left behind with an expired parking placard in the window—which never even belonged to Gallagher in the first place. (And yes, Seinfeld's driver really is named Gallagher!) more ›

Here we go again. After countless allegations of fraud and abuse of police parking placards, a new report indicates that some 22,000 parking decals for disabled drivers are missing, and they might have fallen into the wrong hands. According to city Comptroller John Liu, the massive number of missing permits means there could be a lucrative black market for the handicapped stickers. "Fraudulent permits are easily created using these seals," he said. more ›

Last week, Justice A. Kirke Bartley was caught using a placard to circumvent parking meters while off-duty. Now this week's The New Yorker reports on the "dashboard diva" wars. (You need a subscription to read full article here) Ground zero is Brooklyn Heights, where one "female executive" is so fed up she keeps a detailed log of the parking habits of placard abusers to aid in a letter-writing campaign. She described a recent interaction with one such abuser: "One day, she confronted a woman and her mother, who were getting into an illegally parked black sedan with medical license plates, which often had a placard in the window. 'I said, 'How do you like your parking space?' the executive recalled. 'And she said, 'I went to school for many years and worked very hard for this.' And I said, 'For a parking space?' And she said, 'Yes.' And her mother said to her, 'Close the window!' " more ›

The Supreme Court Justice who sentenced Anthony Marshall to prison for stealing his mother Brook Astor's fortune has been caught illegally using a parking placard issued by the NYPD. The Post, which, like the Daily News, loves busting parking placard abusers, caught Justice A. Kirke Bartley routinely parking his SUV at expired parking meters around his Upper East Side neighborhood. Judges who request the placards are not allowed to use them while they're off duty, but Bartley's ride was observed parked at an expired one-hour meter three times last week, without a single ticket. Confronted by the tabloid, the judge confessed—but refused to pay his debt to society. more ›

The certificate in the windshield of the illegally parked van that sat in Times Square for two days before sending the city into panic was stolen — and it doesn't have anything to do with parking, according to the nonprofit that issued the ID. Though it looks like an NYPD parking placard, a lawyer representing Detectives Crime Clinic of New Jersey and New York claims the certificate isn't supposed to carry any benefits and merely serves as a way of identifying members. more ›

The owner of the "suspicious" white van with temporary plates and a fake police parking placard that forced a shutdown of Times Square on December 30—complete with the bomb squad investigation and neighboring building evacuations—emerged yesterday. And he was arrested! The Post reports, "The van's owner, George Freyer 36, turned himself in yesterday and was charged with possession of a forged instrument"—which is a felony—"Sources said a fake registration was found inside the vehicle." more ›

The NY Post is clinging to Rabbi Leib Glanz like a tenacious dybbuk. After exposing the perks he arranged for Jewish inmates at the Manhattan Detention Complex—from allowing one to throw his son's bar mitzvah at the Tombs to allegedly allowing sex with female prisoners—Rabbi Glanz resigned. But the Post is still all over him, and on Friday they caught him using an official Uniformed Firefighters Association placard. more ›

Responding to the glut of city employees' parking placards—which let them park for free at meters and many off-limits areas—last year the mayor's office managed to cut the 144,160 placards by over 20 percent. To accomplish this goal, the city consolidated control over the placards with the NYPD; formerly each city agency got to dole out their own. The NYPD's point person for determining which officers got placards was Lt. Jemal Doute, the head of the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau's Vehicle Placard Unit—until recently, when it was discovered that a female friend of Doute's obtained one of the "older" models of the placards through Doute. more ›

Yesterday morning, a fire broke out in an apartment building in the Fordham section of the Bronx, and when the firefighters responded, there was a car—with an "official NYPD placard issued to cops"— blocking the hydrant. The Post reports "frustrated firefighters had to rely on handheld fire extinguishers to put out the kitchen blaze." Four young children were treated for smoke inhalation at a local hospital—and a cat was given oxygen on the scene! While the FDNY said it wasn't clear whether the hydrant-blocking car was a cop's car, "another fire official at the scene told The Post it was an unmarked police vehicle." Still, a Post photographer who tried to snap a picture of the placard itself "was forced to move away by cops." The car was towed and moved to the 52nd Precinct, probably to keep from the angry neighbors egging it—they told the Post, "Why would you leave your car where people need to get water in case of an emergency?" and "If it was an off-duty cop, he should have known better." more ›

Last year the Bloomberg administration made a big deal about reducing the number of parking placards issued to city employees, slashing them by over 25,000. At the time, the cutback on permits, which allow cops, civil servants, and other lucky bureaucrats to park almost anywhere, was heralded by Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives as “a good first step. But the final analysis will be weeks and months from now, when we see how actively these plaques are enforced." more ›

Chalk up another one for tabloid journalism: On the same day that the Daily News published galling photos of a former MTA board member illegally parking with a police-issued parking permit, the so-called "perk jerk" surrendered the placard—which he was supposed to do last year. Alan Friedberg, who hasn't been on the MTA board since 2003, was photographed on Sunday parking his Jaguar in a restricted zone near Times Square. Last year the MTA cut back on the number of authority-issued permits by 15% to 295, and Friedman was one of three board members who had failed to give back the perk. In justifying his ongoing air of entitlement to the News, he explained that he was a "pretty heavy worker" while serving on the board. more ›

On Monday we took a closer look at Kimora Lee Simmons not-quite-legal parking placard. Not surprisingly, it turns out the diva doesn't do much "official business" for the city, but rather uses the permit for choice parking spots in front of her favorite shops. Shocking. more ›

Kimora Lee Simmons is often on official business...shopping! The NY Post caught her out and about with a possibly illegal parking permit recently. Their "eagle-eyed lensman" saw Simmons and boyfriend Djimon Hounsou "shopping at the swanky department store Barneys late last week while her driver dutifully stood guard outside Simmons' Cadillac Escalade, which had a New York Correction Department placard on its dashboard." more ›