Streetsblog NYC

April 4, 2021 9:57 PM

MARCH (PARKING) MADNESS: Welcome to the Finals — the 114th vs. the 34th
posted by aniola (25 comments total)

When police kill people, they are rarely prosecuted and hard to convict

Good luck with those parking tickets.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:09 PM on April 4, 2021

I like the constructive and creative way Streetsblog is doing something about those feelings of frustration.
posted by aniola at 10:20 PM on April 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

ACAB, even in matters of non-emergency parking of their vehicles:

At this point, the officer apparently noticed the reporter’s press badge.

“Maybe you can write about how we should have a parking lot,” the cop offered.

“Actually, I’d prefer to write about how you should have a residency requirement, with housing vouchers, if needed, so all cops would be forced to live in the city,” the reporter offered.

Neither the cop nor his silent partner wanted to talk more, so they left (photo above right), leaving our reporter to wonder if this encounter would have gone the same if, say, the reporter was a different race or said what the officers considered the “wrong” thing.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:17 AM on April 5, 2021 [5 favorites]

Good luck with those parking tickets.

I dunno. This almost feels like “broken windows policing” applied to cop malfeasance. Especially when highlighting car-culture supremacy in such a car-hostile environment seems to bring out the worst impulses to intimidate and flaunt laws. Parallels between placards and licenses to kill.

I don’t hate it.
posted by supercres at 12:40 AM on April 5, 2021 [8 favorites]

(On non-preview, obviously that’s a clear enough parallel that StreetsBlog would have already pointed it out. Oops.)

Ok, do Philly next!
posted by supercres at 12:45 AM on April 5, 2021

"One cop is so brazen that he puts his station wagon wherever he wants — and doesn’t care if the neighbors see all the white supremacist stickers on it."

Wow. Is it pollyanna-ish to think that this would be cause for dismissal? (I guess I know it is. But jeez.)
posted by booksarelame at 2:24 AM on April 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

The 34th has been barricaded (albeit ineffectively) with someone stationed outside to prevent the public from approaching since last summer, when, if I recall correctly, a fairly senior officer (i.e. a white shirt) broke a protester's arm.

Honestly, though, if I were to complain about our local police precinct, their parking would be pretty low on the list--the sidewalks are still passable. Maybe that says something about me and my expectations of police.

To be fair, I walked past yesterday, but on the other side of the street, and didn't look to see if they've, uh, stood down their defenses.
posted by hoyland at 6:23 AM on April 5, 2021

Any Chicagoan will tell you that a tartan headband hanging from a rear-view mirror is a sign that the illegal sideways triple-parked car in that handicapped zone isn't being ticketed for shit.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:16 AM on April 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

so all cops would be forced to live in the city

Went about expressing this demand backwards. This sounds like an impingement on the cops’ rights. Always put it in terms of “only residents of the cities hired as police.” It properly frames the debate in terms of a population’s right to be policed by members of their own community.

However, in a city as large as New York, you’d probably want it even more tightly restricted.
posted by explosion at 7:41 AM on April 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Chicago has that requirement, and all it does is concentrate the cops and fireman into self-contained neighborhoods that are as close to the city outskirts as physically possible.

My wife grew up in one of these areas on the southwest side, the city limit was 6 doors away from her front stoop. She'll be the first to tell you it doesn't improve community engagement one iota. It just isolates them more.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:26 AM on April 5, 2021 [5 favorites]

Parking so your vehicle is limiting people's ability to walk on the the sidewalk is absolute bullshit. I am, however, going to have to come to the defense of what they're calling "combat parking." It's my preferred method of parking. Not because I worry I might need to make a quick getaway, but if I have to back up while either parking or leaving a given parking spot, I'd rather back up into a more constrained controlled space so that I can have much better visibility when exiting the space and moving into regular traffic. Particularly if my 5'2" butt is in my normal-sized car and I'm surrounded by ginormous Ford Extension Engorged-Edition SUVs (or whatever the hell the current trendy VERY LARGE MENACING vehicle of choice is), I find visibility much better exiting the parking spot in drive rather than in reverse and it feels way safer.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:35 AM on April 5, 2021 [4 favorites]

I think the “combat parking” is perpendicular to the designated parallel parking spots, which allows more cops to park, but their cars extend out into bike lanes.
posted by Monochrome at 9:30 AM on April 5, 2021

“Actually, I’d prefer to write about how you should have a residency requirement, with housing vouchers, if needed, so all cops would be forced to live in the city,” the reporter offered.

The reporter's phrasing belies the fact that residency is one of the only things the NYPD police union actually agrees with reformers on, which should give you a sense of how unlikely it would be to contribute to real reform.

To extend the Chicago comparison made by JoeZydeco, a residency requirement in that city hasn't made cops any less prone to torturing people.
posted by theory at 9:54 AM on April 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

(I can't see any of the images here, despite having javascript enabled. is there a work around?)
posted by EllaEm at 10:54 AM on April 5, 2021

(Can you see them from the archive?)
posted by aniola at 11:05 AM on April 5, 2021

Monochrome: ah! I thought it was generally front-out parking, so one can make a faster getaway by not having to make a 3 point turn while escaping in combat conditions or something.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:40 AM on April 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

Turns out I’m wrong and you’re right about the definition of combat parking; any nose-out parking seems to qualify according to a quick Google. (And I was surprised to see that parking techniques have to have a masculine tacticool nickname.)

Still I think the complaint is that cops are parking perpendicular and extending out into the street. This image from the post leads me to believe that parallel parking is the norm and the cops are perpendicular.
posted by Monochrome at 2:48 PM on April 5, 2021

It is ALL about the tacticool. I'm surprised they're not trying to rebrand cops as 'CRIME WARFIGHTERS' or something.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:28 PM on April 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think they're being ironic or sardonic or something with the tacticool. Think: combat parking for donuts.
posted by aniola at 4:51 PM on April 5, 2021

or something.
posted by aniola at 7:25 PM on April 5, 2021

The 34th is my precinct. I actually think the 33 is much worse, because they like to park in the bike lane that runs right by it instead of their large parking lot. (It's a bi-directional bike lane that is supposed to be separated from traffic, so it's the width of one car lane. For some reason the police think this is the perfect place to store their vehicles.)

Photo on reddit. (Heh, I knew this would be documented on the internet.)
posted by anhedonic at 8:54 AM on April 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

It is ALL about the tacticool

To be FAIR (because you must always be fair to the police) it does double the amount of cars you can fit into the same space length of curb, and pulling out forward is safer than backing into traffic.

The funny thing about driving around NYC looking for parking is that you come upon blocks like this and you say "oh, they have angle parking here?" and then "no, it's just cops." And then you move on, because you can't park there.
posted by anhedonic at 8:58 AM on April 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Is it doubling the amount of cars you can fit into the same space at the cost of sidewalk, bike lane space, or similar?
posted by aniola at 9:10 AM on April 6, 2021

I'm really confused about this whole "tacticool" thing. Isn't Streetsblog just making fun of the cops for the blocks and blocks of illegal, inconsiderate parking? Like, maybe this combat parking is about the cops fighting a war that we don't even want them fighting?
posted by aniola at 9:14 AM on April 6, 2021

Is it doubling the amount of cars you can fit into the same space at the cost of sidewalk, bike lane space, or similar?

In the case of the 34th, honestly, not really. They're definitely encroaching on the sidewalk and the traffic lane (there is not bike lane), but the sidewalk is wide enough that it doesn't matter and I honestly don't know if you can expect any block of Broadway around here to actually have two lanes unobstructed in both directions.

I think what anhedonic and I are getting at is that there are many things one could complain about with regard to the 34th precinct and their parking habits just... aren't that high on our lists.
posted by hoyland at 5:08 PM on April 6, 2021 [1 favorite]