Glad-I-Ate-Her

Life in the big city:


Ticket for what?
Almost anything.

Even feeding birds draws a summons.


By MAKI BECKER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


Ella and Serge Shroitman (with daughter Stephanie) were ticketed for blocking their own driveway. Alexander Ortiz was ticketed for improperly bundling newspapers to be recycled. Pedro Nazario was ticketed for feeding pigeons in public.

That black license plate frame that came with your car? Illegal. $55 fine.
Taking up two seats on a train? $50.

Feeding pigeons in the park? Another $50.

It used to be that most cops wouldn't bother writing a ticket for minor and obscure infractions.

But with the city hurting for money, ordinary citizens suddenly are finding themselves shelling out hard-earned cash to pay fines for things they didn't even know were against the law.

The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association charges the city has a ticket quota and that there's more pressure than ever on cops to write summonses. The city denies the charges.

But anecdotal evidence is mounting - including the Daily News' report last week about a Bronx man who got a summons for sitting on a milk crate.

The News asked readers to submit their personal tales of ticket blitz woes, and dozens responded.

Jacob Walzer, 28, an office worker from Borough Park, Brooklyn, said he got a nasty surprise last Tuesday when he spotted that dreaded orange envelope under the wiper of his car parked on W. 47th St. near 12th Ave.

The ticket was for "improperly displayed plates."

His rear plate has a black frame around it - a big no-no, as far as the Department of Motor Vehicles is concerned.

"Every car in the city has a frame from the dealer," said Walzer, who didn't realize the frames are illegal. "There are so many laws that people don't know about."

Tired of playing bad cop.

Officers say they, too, are unhappy with the ticketing blitz, which has them feeling like they're being forced to play the bad guys.

"They call it productivity goals, we call it quotas, and it's a very stressful situation," said Drew Bailey, a Brooklyn union official with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.

Cops in Brooklyn South, for instance, have been told to write summonses to wayward bicyclists for infractions such as coasting with their feet off the pedals or for riding bicycles without bells, Bailey said.

The PBA even launched a $100,000 ad campaign called "Don't Blame the Cop," charging that law enforcement officers are being pressured to issue more tickets.

"I just feel like now, it's a switcheroo game to find ways to trick people to give them tickets," said T.J. Brady, 29, an electrical supplies salesman who was socked with a $105 parking ticket after he left his car overnight on 10th Ave. in midtown Manhattan last week.

The sign posted overhead indicated it was legal: metered parking from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m., and a no-standing zone from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Brady didn't see a sign - inside the meter - that said "no standing." But the little sign inside the meter didn't even give the no-standing hours.

Mayor Bloomberg has defended the city's crackdown, saying the police are simply doing their job. And he has urged New Yorkers to start obeying all the city's laws - and suck it up if they get a ticket.

"Don't throw litter on the streets, and you won't have a problem," he said Wednesday at a Coney Island press conference. "Don't park illegally and you won't have a problem - but we can't have it both ways. We can't have laws that say 'No Parking Here' and then you complain when we give out tickets."



Glad

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I'm "Glad I Ate Her" because the payback was worth it!!

JadziaDax

I got socked with a $55 ticket for the meter going out at 9:43 when the sign said metered parking until 10pm. 17 lousy minutes... that cop had to be sitting there waiting... I knew something had to be up... because I've had the meter run out on me before and never got a ticket, but this time... GRRRRRR.

So, for another $50, I could have parked there all night? I guess the new NYC parking rate is $55 for the first 17 minutes.

qpid

wow those bike laws would get me daily if i lived in NY

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krwlz

Id be fucked a million times over if I lived there...

Frowning Budah

Nice thing about where I live. The cops don't bother you for nothing. My wife passes cops doing at least 10 mph over the limit, runs red lights etc. they have never pulled her over. Of course I never comit any traffic infractions

MSD

You need to get rid of that asshole mayor. Of course I should shut up, becuase my town has an asshole to get rid of next election, but I think the trend should spread.

[whispering]Tax the rich people who can afford it.[/whispering]

Daval

That is a little overboard. I have nothing against the police ticketing people for such things as stop signs and illegal turns and whatnot, but this nitpicking is ridiculous.

I hope the voters in NYC have a long memory when it comes to election time.

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gov135

Its all a revenue thing. By bringing in the revenue, the cops know they can justify their expense to the city. This isn't just meter maid stuff, this is beat cops being pressured by thier bosses to write tickets for these small infractions. In the meantime, NYC is closing a couple of firehouses.

Instead of harassing Joe Blow and his wife, maybe the cops should focus on doing something about crime rates or doing some of the other community service things like teaching children how to prevent abduction.

Cynthetiq

jeez if they did that in NYC there would be everyone pulled over to the side of the road...

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Cynthetiq

umm... i by no means consider myself rich... but the government seems to think that... I don't want to pay any more taxes, I pay more in federal taxes than some people make in a year. Enough already.

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Sticky

This sucks but ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

Sorry for this stupid rhyme, but if you do the crime you should be ready to do the time (or pay the fine).

That being said, however, you have every right to fight the fine in court. If more people fight these fines in court the city may notice that the revenue they are getting from these tickets are costing them alot more in time wasted by the courts.

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hrdwareguy

I got a 90 dollar ticket for parking on my lawn once.

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warrrreagl

When the South deserves credit, I will certainly give it. And down here, the world is just one big potential parking lot. If your car can physically fit in there, then it's a parking place. I've only rarely seen cars ticketed for parking violations.

Sporting events are a hoot, because people drive as close as they can get to the venue, and then just stop the car and get out. Consider yourself parked.

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Glad-I-Ate-Her

Jadzia,
That was the old fine. As of this week, you would have been given a 105.00 ticket for 17 minutes!! Figure out that logic.

Glad

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I'm "Glad I Ate Her" because the payback was worth it!!

Cynthetiq

UPDATE:
Quotas? What quotas?

Mayor sez cops have 'performance' goals

By DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF

With outrage over the city’s latest ticket blitz growing, Mayor Bloomberg insisted yesterday that cops are not being forced to meet ticket quotas - just “performance measurements."
"We don’t have quotas," he told a breakfast gathering of city lawyers. "But Commissioner [Raymond] Kelly will tell you ... he has performance meas.urements." "You could never run a police department of 40,000 people," the mayor added later in the day, "without some measurement tools."

But union leaders yesterday said Bloomberg can call it whatever he wants — cops are under increasing pressure to write more tickets as the cash-strapped city scrambles to find revenue.

"The department does take punitive action. It punishes police officers who do not meet their performance goals," said Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association spokesman Al O’Leary. "That means it's a quota. That means it's illegal."

"One officer told us the other day he went and put in a request for a day off and he was told, 'Go get me 20 [summonses] or you won't get the day off,'" O'Leary said.

Revenue hunt

The city's own numbers seem to tell the story. Bloomberg's latest budget calls for hiring 300 more traffic cops to boost ticket revenues by some $69 million next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

And data released yesterday by City Hall show that parking, moving and criminal summonses in patrol precincts new are up by 79,000 — or 8.2% on average — this year over last. Still, the number is down 16% from two years ago.

Michael O'Looney, a spokesman for Kelly, said the NYPD, "like every job, and every business in America, has productivity goals, aimed at measuring performance."

"These goals vary by demand, and without them, it would be impossible to effectively manage the largest police force in the country," he added.

In recent weeks, cops have issued summonses to unusual suspects, including a Bronx man tagged for sitting on a milk crate and an 18-year-old mom-to-be who got whacked $50 for sitting on a subway staircase while taking a breather.

Yesterday, another shocking case emerged — a city special ed teacher who was nailed for fare-beating Tuesday after pushing a cart of classroom supplies through a service entrance at the Lexington Ave. line's Brooklyn Bridge stop, just a platfrom-length away from City Hall.

Inez Galarza, 30, planned to swipe her Metrocard through the turnstile after being cleared to pass through the gate with her 11-year-old son by a token booth clerk. But she never had a chance.

A city transit cop immediately demanded to see some ID, saying, "It's too late," as Galarza begged to swipe her card.

"I just needed to swipe it through," said Galarza, noting that with a 7-day unlimited pass, she had no incentive to evade the law. "It's not like I was trying to get out of paying."

Galarza's husband, David, was so incensed by the summons that he staked out Bloomberg's breakfast speech Another recent summons so enraged David Galarza that he staked out Bloomberg's breakfast speech at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York yesterday — confronting the mayor during a public question-and-answer session.

"What's with all the quotas?" asked Galarza, waving a copy of his wife's summons in the air.

That's when Bloomberg made his comments about "performance measurements," adding in response to Galarza, "If your wife doesn't like whatever this law [is], the City Council can amend the law."

Bloomberg blamed the fuss over summonses on "the sensationalist press" and elections at the PBA, a charge the union denied.

He later produced a 1996 Daily News story showing how the city was issuing summons for trivial infractions as trivial as unlicensed Boy Scout bake sales, bicycle riders without bells and unlicensed mechanical pony rides— suggesting that nothing has changed.

"The fact of the matter is the police are doing a great job at keeping the quality of life in this city where we want it," said Bloomberg. "And, if occasionally, there is a ticket that doesn’t make a lot of sense — maybe in the case of the mom-to-be — it’s a shame that that happens.

Blaming the state

But Bloomberg's suggestion that complainants contact the City Council drew a biting response yesterday from Speaker Gifford Miller (D-Manhattan), who argued that many of the more arcane laws are the state's fault.

The milk crate violation issued last week to a Bronx man, for instance, can be traced to the state Agriculture Department, while tickets for taking up two seats on a subway train are the work of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Miller said.

"If he can’t get common sense to be applied, we will try to consider ridiculous situations and include exemptions [in the laws] in ridiculous cases," he said of the mayor. "I would have thought that it would be unnecessary to include exemptions for pregnant, tired women."

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.