
The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It - danso
http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/144197004989/the-nypd-was-systematically-ticketing-legally
======
danso
For people who skip straight to the comments: I couldn't fit it into the
title, but the other half of the OP's title is that the author confronted the
NYPD with his data analysis and they _thanked_ him _and_ spoke positively
about the effect of open data:

> _“Mr. Wellington’s analysis identified errors the department made in issuing
> parking summonses. It appears to be a misunderstanding by officers on patrol
> of a recent, abstruse change in the parking rules. We appreciate Mr.
> Wellington bringing this anomaly to our attention...

> _Thanks to this analysis and the availability of this open data, the
> department is also taking steps to digitally monitor these types of
> summonses to ensure that they are being issued correctly.”*

Sure, it's easy to pay lip service to open data and transparency...but I've
found for the most part that bureaucracies are generally OK with open data
_after it 's been ingrained in their culture_ (which is why it is so amazingly
easy to get data from Florida -- they have an IT system that is optimized to
handle it -- the employees don't mind fulfilling the requests since it's no
skin off their back).

Bloomberg got the ball rolling, and hopefully the momentum continues...I'd be
happy with NYC agencies tolerating open data as a status quo...Looking forward
to the day when bureaucrats and citizens can get to the point where
transparency isn't seen as a zero-sum game.

~~~
parennoob
The fact that they thanked him means exactly zero if they don't give back the
money that they got from people who were lawfully parked, but still got
erroneously fined by the department for reasons that _directly contradict
existing law_.

It is easy to give verbal apologies (especially using hedging words like
“....recent, abstruse change in the parking rules.” If the police are so
confused by abstruse changes in the parking rules, how are normal people
supposed to understand and obey them?). Monetary ones are more difficult to
come by.

[EDIT: To make it clear, I'm not saying the work of 'iquantny hasn't resulted
in positive change. It obviously has. Just that the department's response is,
in my opinion, not positive enough.]

~~~
gshulegaard
I respectfully disagree.

An error was identified, communicated, and acted upon as a result of open
data. Specifically, it became known that due to inadequate training practices
patrol officers were unawares of the change whereas parking enforcement were
the only ones trained and therefore were not making the same mistake:

> "When the rule changed in 2009 to allow for certain pedestrian ramps to be
> blocked by parked vehicles, the department focused training on traffic
> agents, who write the majority of summonses."

> "Yet, the majority of summonses written for this code violation were written
> by police officers. As a result, the department sent a training message to
> all officers clarifying the rule change and has communicated to commanders
> of precincts with the highest number of summonses, informing them of the
> issues within their command."

So the issue isn't that police were confused so much as their training wasn't
updated because of a system failure (training only traffic agents and not
patrol officers).

Further they are taking action to monitor the open data themselves to detect
future anomalies themselves:

> "Thanks to this analysis and the availability of this open data, the
> department is also taking steps to digitally monitor these types of
> summonses to ensure that they are being issued correctly."

This is a great step forward regardless of whether or not en-mass refund
occur.

To me, a refund would be icing on the cake. And perhaps one will happen
(hopefully) this post was published today (May 11, 2016) after all.

As an aside, there is also something to be said about the fact citizens should
be aware of their own rights and laws. Any citizen could and should have
contested wrongly issued tickets.

~~~
rsp1984
And I respectfully disagree with you.

Money has been taken from citizens by the authorities in an unlawful manner.
Money has to be given back. I don't know what more to say about this matter.
If I steal 200$ out of your pocket and you find out, my feeling is you would
want your money back, not an apology and my heartfelt assurance that it won't
happen again...

~~~
klean92
I am afraid it would cost $2M to try to pay back $1.7M... i think they should
first spend their time and $$ in making sure they fix the issues going
forward.

~~~
newjersey
Find the money somewhere. Take it out of the police chief's pay for all I
care. In fact, I don't think just returning the money is enough. The money
should be returned with interest as if it were put into a municipal bond.

The worst part is that every time this happens, the taxpayers are on the hook.
I think nothing will change as long as wrong decisions doesn't hurt the
decision-makers. I don't know how to implement this but something has to give.
When in doubt, officers should err on the side of not writing tickets.

Unrelated but our police officers need stronger protection from the insanity
of things like quotas. Make it immensely profitable for an officer to
whistleblow situations where they are required to collect $n in fines or write
n tickets. Make it a federal law and take that money ($10MM per incidence per
officer sounds like a good start, the point is it has to be high enough that
there won't be peer pressure for an officer to "get in line") from the
department. If they can't pay, too bad. The municipality/county doesn't
deserve a police force.

------
colordrops
An anecdot: when I lived in Manhattan in 2001, I parked near 61st and 1st,
between two differing parking signs. I was clearly very close to one, and much
further from another, by at least 50 yards. I got a ticket for illegal parking
according to the further sign. Being a broke ex-dot-commer, I was furious, so
I photographed and measured everything, and put together a seven page report.

After a long while, I got a response back from the responsible agency, which
agreed that I was in compliance with the parking rules, and thus they would
reduce the fine from $100 to $40. What??

~~~
aptwebapps
Processing fee. Five bucks plus five per page they had to read.

------
thevibesman
In 2011, I was given two parking tickets when legally parked in Boston.

The first ticket was issued for parking in resident street parking without a
permit. I was actually parked just after the sign delimiting the resident
parking area[1]. I photographed where I was parked and sent in an appeal which
was accepted.

A month later, I was parked in the same non-resident street parking and I was
issued a ticket for failing to pay a parking meter; the number of the meter I
supposedly failed to pay was a LONG block and a half away from where I was
parked. Again, I submitted an appeal, but this time it was not accepted.

The friend I was visiting when I received these tickets was a producer for a
local television news station. She told the story of these two tickets to
their investigative reporter who was interested in the story and was going to
inquire about it with the Boston PD. Apparently she didn't get anywhere with
the story, but Boston PD did stop sending me failure to pay notifications for
the fine.

[1]: This non-resident street parking was not metered.

(EDIT: Foot-note formatting)

~~~
sundvor
Nice. I'm just hoping you won't find out one day that they didn't forget in
the form of an arrest warrant or something like that for failure to pay.
(Disclaimer: I live in Melbourne, Australia, so that could just be the stuff
of fiction for what I know).

~~~
sokoloff
MA will enforce unpaid fines with non-renewal of MA driver's license or
vehicle registration. I don't know with which states MA has a reciprocity
agreement for that. (And eventually, I think at 3 overdue tickets, your car is
eligible for the boot.)

These are civil fines; no arrest warrant will be issued, but I also doubt that
just because BPD stopped sending notices that they agree the ticket was bogus
and have deleted it. Far more likely is they just stopped sending notices and
the ticket is still active.

~~~
thevibesman
> I also doubt that just because BPD stopped sending notices that they agree
> the ticket was bogus and have deleted it. Far more likely is they just
> stopped sending notices and the ticket is still active.

I attempted to pay the ticket, it was no longer in the system.

------
ghaff
As the article explained, tickets had been voided when cases were disputed as
widely happens in just about every city.

Honestly, if I were a public official reading the comments here, I'd be
inclined to just go "Why do I even bother? I explained how, even though the
people who hand out most of the parking tickets were educated about the
change, many police officers weren't. We'll fix it now."

Sure, rerun the analysis a year or two down the road. If things don't change,
that's a story. But this strikes me as a nice use of open data and a
reasonable response from the NYPD. You can argue that they should do pro-
active refunds but a lot of addresses will have changed and it would be
otherwise difficult and expensive. I'm honestly not convinced that's a
reasonable expectation.

~~~
woodman
> I'm honestly not convinced that's a reasonable expectation.

It seems reasonable to me - not being allowed to keep money that isn't yours
and that you shouldn't have taken (even by mistake), consider the incentives -
writing a huge number of false tickets and then returning the money only to
those that are willing to go through the trouble of contesting the ticket.

~~~
ghaff
Eh. Cities issue parking violations all the time when they shouldn't
(partially because the rules can be confusing). And, at the same time, many,
many people get off with parking violations because they weren't caught. It's
hard for me to get excited about a specific group of non-violations because
they happened to occur in high incidence spots as uncovered by an examination
of public data.

I'm not opposed to the city making a modest effort to refund money to this
subset of individuals. Though if it does so I expect it will be purely because
they see it as a good PR play.

~~~
tamana
So, it's OK to punish innocent people because guilty people go free? That's
your argument?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think the point is that sometimes fighting tooth & nail out of principle for
an issue of minor relevance may not be worth it if it damages the goodwill of
those making a big and relevant change for good.

------
wheelchairuser
It seems that there are multiple failures here. 1\. Designated approved
cutouts should be an easier process to obtain (just try getting a stop
sign/crosswalk approved in the city and you'll understand the black hole that
is the DOT approval process) 2\. Over eager officers issuing tickets.

Pedestrian cutouts are there for a real purpose, namely accessibility for
people with disabilities and wheelchairs. While it sucks for cars to get
ticketed, I for one share no compassion with those people blocking cutouts in
general, because they are not offering courtesy for those people who require
these cutouts to live.

Edit: For those suggesting that the crosswalks in the middle of the block go
"nowhere" consider the following. a wheelchair user parks his/her car and
exits the car. he/she will have to cross all the way to the ends of the block
in order to get out of the street into safety. even it may seem like it's
going nowhere, there is a real functional purpose.

~~~
ghaff
How does the city designate cutouts that are not approved for parking for
disabled access, etc.? I noticed in the article that: "(Yellow paint has no
meaning in NYC traffic enforcement, and the spot has no crosswalk)"

~~~
wheelchairuser
The traffic rule book only states (§4-01):

Crosswalk. (i) Marked crosswalk. That part of a roadway defined by two
parallel lines or highlighted by a pattern of lines (perpendicular, parallel
or diagonal used either separately or in combination) that is intended to
guide pedestrians into proper crossing paths. (ii) Unmarked crosswalk. That
part of a roadway, other than a marked crosswalk, which is included within the
extensions of the sidewalk lines between opposite sides of the roadway at an
intersection, provided that (A) the roadway crosses through the intersection
rather than ending at the intersection, and/or (B) all traffic on the opposing
roadway is controlled by a traffic control device.*

Basically it is approved if there are two parallel lines (marked crosswalk) or
no parallel lines (unmarked crosswalk) and is NOT a T-intersection or if there
is a traffic control device.

------
mynameisnoone
NYPD ticketed Casey Neistat for not riding in the bike lane, a viral video put
an end to it. ;)

[http://youtu.be/bzE-IMaegzQ](http://youtu.be/bzE-IMaegzQ)

~~~
wyldfire
While I think that's a good thing, this is different from that in an
interesting way. In this case, the government opted-in to releasing data to
the public. And beyond that they accepted the "government bug report" from a
citizen data analyst and (1) issued a correction and (2) vowed to monitor this
data item going forward.

A viral video is IMO not very different from having the local news media shame
the government into taking the right action. While these videos have helped us
reign in the systematic racism and violence of the police here in the US, it's
fantastic to see the government acting in such a responsible and effective
manner.

------
bpchaps
I've been working on something like this for over a year now for Chicago. Most
of that time's been spent just simply doing data cleanups.

My most recent update from Monday: [https://plot.ly/~red-
bin/6.embed](https://plot.ly/~red-bin/6.embed)

Pretty fucking proud of that, not gonna lie.

------
bradgessler
This is a good reminder that San Francisco went the other direction and
blocked Fixed: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/12/fixed-the-app-that-fixes-
yo...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/12/fixed-the-app-that-fixes-your-parking-
tickets-gets-blocked-in-san-francisco-oakland-l-a/)

------
jasonjei
Did NYPD refund fines from erroneously paid citations?

~~~
darpa_escapee
No, that would mean admitting wrongdoing by their officers and that will never
happen.

It's also a nice revenue stream and would expose the internal pressures to
raise money through ticketing by management and administrators.

~~~
iquantny
They admit wrongdoing in the quote.

~~~
DiabloD3
But there is nothing in the story stating NYC is returning the effectively
stolen, as per their admission to wrongdoing, money.

~~~
morganvachon
It's not stolen, that implies an intent to do wrong. Per the NYPD's response
(and given their candor, I find no reason to believe otherwise) it's clear
this was a training issue and the officers writing the tickets were doing
their duty to the best of their knowledge at the time.

And having said that, yes I believe the money should be returned, and probably
will.

------
m0llusk
It might make sense to focus on the core issue of pedestrian safety and curb
cuts. As someone who rolls to most of my destinations on wheels blocked ramps
can be a major inconvenience that might conceivably compete with parking
convenience as an issue.

------
PhasmaFelis
That's a shame. Parking in front of a handicapped-access ramp is a shitty
thing to do even if it is legal.

~~~
ghaff
It's either legal to park in a spot or not legal to park in a spot. It doesn't
work and certainly doesn't scale to have spots where "maybe I shouldn't park
there because I might get in someone's way even though it's a legal spot."

~~~
ricardobeat
The article mentions that regulations recently changed to allow this, maybe
the cops are just using common sense?

~~~
djrogers
2009 is hardly 'recently'...

------
jrockway
Why risk parking in a questionable area like a ramp cutout when some streets
have an entire extra parking lane (indicated by a picture of a bicycle)?

~~~
corndoge
All these downvotes, apparently nobody can appreciate a bit of satire :P

------
tibbon
Dozens of motorcyclists in downtown Boston recently had a problem like this.
There are 12-hour motorcycle meters (25 cents an hour, woo!), but a parking
cop kept issuing tickets for "Over 2 hour parking" at those meters. They
assumed they were like the car meters.

I challenged my stack of them, and they relented, but refused to actually
write me back with how/why this was happening, and how they were upgrading
their training.

What gets me, is that I doubt they did a search through their system for all
such tickets, and then immediately issued refunds- or put through a software
patch on their ticketing system to disallow those tickets at motorcycle
meters.

Refunding can't be that hard.

~~~
dexterdog
Refunding can be very hard if you have to write the check that you are hoping
you won't have to write.

~~~
tibbon
Sounds like having to pay an unexpected parking ticket that you weren't
budgeting for ;)

------
holdenc
Sad to see that a majority of these bad tickets are in poorer neighborhoods.
It seems most of Manhattan (below the Bronx) is relatively ok.

~~~
nowarninglabel
I thought that too, but we don't know how many of these types of spots exist
in Manhattan vs. Brooklyn, it could just be that the poorer neighborhoods
happen to have more sidewalk ramps. Would have to do more analysis on the
data.

------
DannyBee
So, i would wait till they stop before i would declare victory :) Certainly a
great step forward, but my cynical view, after dealing with tons and tons and
tons of city governments (it used to be my job):

It's very easy to issue statements saying they've solved the problem. Rarely
do they actually solve the problem :)

------
tedmiston
How do you know that these tickets, given _at_ locations of pedestrian ramps,
were not actually due to other things... like uncommon street sweeping hours
or those pesky snow parking restrictions that are so hard to keep track of. Is
the reason for citation available in the data?

~~~
taejo
> But thanks to NYC’s Open Data portal, I was able to look at the most common
> parking spots in the City where cars were ticketed _for blocking pedestrian
> ramps._

~~~
tedmiston
To clarify, I was hoping to see validation with reference to the specific
citation code(s), etc.

For example, open the 2014 data link [0] included at the bottom of the post.
When I run:

    
    
        Filter >
          Violation Description >
            Contains >
              ramp
    

There are no results.

It's possible there's a bug in the tool or that the violations are encoded
using different language, but it's not something that's obvious to me.

0: [https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Parking-
Violat...](https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Parking-Violations-
Issued-Fiscal-Year-2014-August-/jt7v-77mi)

------
ommunist
In Russian big cities commercial car evacuation for misparked often bribes
policeman to cover their activity. But resistance is futile and there is
helping app against that [http://peapp.ru](http://peapp.ru).

------
fsaneq2
We need this in SF. SFMTA ticketed my car for no reason before; I tried their
"appeal" process, only to get a response that sounded like they didn't even
read what I said.

~~~
twinkletwinkle
I once received a parking ticket timestamped 2 in the afternoon. Funny thing
is, that day I drove across the GG Bridge and went hiking - I had photographic
evidence of crossing the bridge in the morning and the toll to prove I
returned in the evening. Therefore I and my car were not in the city at 2 pm
and could not have parked illegally.

Appeal denied.

~~~
dragonwriter
Its quite easy to leave SF via the GGB in the morning, reenter SF via any of a
variety of different routes and get a ticket at 2pm, leave SF again, and
reenter via the GGB in the evening.

Now, if you had described evidence of the specific location your car was at
the time of the ticket, and the appeal was still denied, that might be a
different story.

~~~
fsaneq2
Heh, please, don't defend these POS. They're cheating and they know it.

I got a ticket for the car being "double parked"; I sent a picture of how it
was parked (right next to the curb in a legal spot). It was a rainy day, so
you could even see that the car must've been in that spot for a while -- it's
not like I moved it there to take a picture.

Later, I got a prewritten appeal denied notice -- it wasn't even specific to
double parking, and mentioned none of the evidence I sent.

I also have several friends with similar experiences.

So, please, let's fire them, instead of making improbable excuses.

~~~
breakingcups
Here in the Netherlands, if a response to your appeal contains evidence that
the handling officer hasn't read your appeal properly or does not give an
appropriate answer to each of your objections, it is grounds to get the ticket
thrown out in court EVEN if it was a legitimate ticket.

An example: If you object to the calibration of the SPECS camera (e.g camera's
that track you over a longer piece of road to determine your average speed)
and the officer responds saying that the radar equipment was properly
calibrated, you can have the ticket thrown out as it was not radar equipment
that ticketed you and thus proper care wasn't shown during the handling of
your appeal.

------
Rapzid
To me this is an example of how transparency through information services is
winning. Eventually this will pervade every aspect of government. We are going
to be in a much better place when we can see what our government is doing in
fine detail; spending, enforcement, funding(think campaigns), voting history,
etc. The technology is there now but we haven't quite reached the point where
it's all on the table and expected/demanded.

------
Qantourisc
"..., the department focused training on traffic agents, ..." -> The police
got trained, but we are suppose to just know the law. How unjust.

------
tomohawk
It's not surprising that a small change like this could be enabled with open
data, but big changes? There's been plenty of data related to medicare fraud,
veteran's admin fraud, etc, but changing big things like that appears to be a
no go even though the cost is tremendous in terms of affected lives and money.

~~~
sleepychu
Small steps. I think there's a knee-jerk reaction (and anecdotally I've found
government organisations to be particularly guilty of this) of taking analysis
like this as embarrassing criticism that needs to be rejected, not embraced.

EDIT: Sorry, my point there was - as more things like this happen we should
see increased engagement from orgs.

------
yomly
After recently dealing with the various governments / nationalised businesses
from a number of countries I can safely say that I am well and truly fed up
with their inane bureaucracy.

This article doesn't surprise me: where the recent swath of internet companies
seem to extoll individual agency/ownership, nationalised companies seem to
preach the exact opposite - a problem is never the individual's responsibility
and people seem perfectly happy to ship a borken status quo. As such,
ludicrous oversights like this are a regular occurrence rather than a gross
intolerable negligence.

This is not even yet mentioning how awful the UX is for the customer who has
to interface with these institutions.

While it may be very easy to discard my point as rife with cliches, it's worth
noting that we have become very spoilt by ruthlessly frictionless (yet equally
effective) customer-facing tech products. The opportunities to streamline
processes and save time and money for state-owned interfaces (both online and
offline). As an example, I recently had to queue in a hospital with my sick
mother for an hour, to be told that that individual couldn't process our
particular issue and that we would have to join the back of the adjacent queue
(not there was zero signposting whatsoever). This is one example and not a
criticism on healthcare, but what happened to service-driven processes?

Instead we, the public, have to live with the dire reality of inefficient (and
increasinly apparently indifferent) government services as the gap between
private and state run services continues to expand as we grow increasingly
disenfranchised.

------
xapata
The best defense we have against bad actors in government (whether intentional
or accidental) is ubiquitous public surveillance -- not the government spying
on the people, but the people monitoring the government. A cameraphone in
nearly every pocket is a good start.

------
c64sys64738
You can't park in peace in NY. They hired h1b traffic officers too, I've heard
the Americans traffic officers weren't aggressive enough.

------
known
Why not [http://www.petition2congress.com/](http://www.petition2congress.com/)

------
kevin_thibedeau
The T intersection at Virginia Avenue is not legal. The ramps serve an
unmarked crosswalk as exists at all intersections in NY state.

~~~
re
Apparently it is legal to park there if it's not a marked crosswalk:
[http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/parking-
regulation...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/parking-
regulations.shtml)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
It is state law. A municipality can't override it.

~~~
tamana
Do you have a state law reference that covers T intersections?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
NY Vehicle and traffic Article 32

    
    
        S 1202. Stopping,  standing or parking prohibited in specified places.
          1. Stop, stand or park a vehicle:
            d. On a cross walk;
          
          2.  Stand  or  park  a  vehicle,  whether  occupied  or  not,  except
              momentarily to pick up or discharge a passenger or passengers:
            b. Within twenty feet of a cross walk at  an  intersection,  unless  a
               different  distance  is indicated by official signs, markings or parking
               meters;
    

Formal definition of a crosswalk in Article 1:

    
    
        S 110. Crosswalk.
          (a)  That  part  of  a roadway at an intersection included within the
          connections of the lateral lines of the sidewalks on opposite sides of
          the highway between the curbs or, in  the  absence  of curbs, between
          the edges of the traversable roadway.
          (b)  Any  portion  of  a  roadway  at  an  intersection  or  elsewhere
          distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by lines or other  markings
          on the surface.
    

In other words there are crosswalks at every intersection whether marked or
not. Crosswalks elsewhere must be marked to be recognized as such. That is why
the unmarked curb cuts in the middle of a block don't count for parking
violations. T intersections are not special in any way and are subject to the
same rules as all others.

------
rotrux
Headline -- "The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End
to It."

Expanded & Explicit Translated Headline -- "Some NYPD Officers Were Cutting
Corners in a Profession Where Cutting Corners is a Relatively Big Deal. Some
People With Computers Did a Fancy Search and Now Those Cops Are Rightfully
Getting in Trouble and the Shit Is Stopping"

You're welcome.

~~~
taejo
Nobody's getting in trouble.

------
caiob
Didn't ticket enough. I say, ticket all the cars just for being on the street.
We need more public transit.

------
agjacobson
Nice. Something like this happened to me in 1979 in Berkeley. You can infer
how angry I got. I was too busy, at the end of grad school, to even contest
it.

------
tn13
Whenever I visit NY I dont assume anything is legal. If someone tells me
walking barefoot is illegal in NY I would believe it. After all they kill
people for sharing smoke and all.

~~~
Grishnakh
It sure seems like I hear about a lot more authoritarian nonsense like this in
the east-coast (namely northeast) cities, and not nearly as much in the west-
coast cities.

------
guelo
I don't think that's what "systematically" means.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I do? When you're collecting two million dollars a year from ticketing legally
parked cars, at less than $200 per ticket, you're not making a minor one-time
error. That's a systematic practice (or, depending on your point of view, a
minor one-time error that happened to be repeated 10,000 times every year).

~~~
guelo
The rules of the system had changed and part of the system was unaware of the
change. The system was not working as a whole to intentionally ticket legally
parked vehicles. It was not systematic. And it's a clickbaity title. My
comment is getting downvoted to oblivion because people don't know the
definition of the word.

~~~
tamana
The system did not stop ticketing parkers after the law changed. The system
was broken, causing systematic problems

