Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

iquantny.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 183 posts

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#11

Post by parennoob »

danso wrote: post #9
parennoob wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Definitely...it's easy for a bureaucrat to say "Thanks for the help, we'll do better next time!" if no one's getting fired.

Yeah. I see what you're saying in the parent comment – even getting this much of a response is a positive thing compared to existing practice, but it's not an overall positive. I suspect they want to avoid a possible lawsuit for unlawfully ticketing legally parked people and hope this blows over because they "gracefully addressed" their (illegal) practices.

A really great response would have been, ”Thanks for contacting us. We realize that we were wrong for issuing these tickets. We will now put in place a program to refund the people who were wrongly issued tickets.”

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#13

Post by gshulegaard »

parennoob wrote: post #7
danso wrote: post #3

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,…

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…

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.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#14

Post by iquantny »

newman314 wrote: post #10
parennoob wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exactly, the proof in the pudding is if the author reruns his analysis a few years down the road with the expected outcome of a dramatic drop in tickets issued in those locations. Anything else is just blowing smoke (EDIT: on the part of the government agencies)

OP Here. If you go through my blog, you'll see that I have pushed for change from many agencies. Scroll to bottom of article for list. And yes, I will be rechecking.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#15

Post by iquantny »

parennoob wrote: post #11
danso wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely...it's easy for a bureaucrat to say "Thanks for the help, we'll do better next time!" if no one's getting fired.

Yeah. I see what you're saying in the parent comment – even getting this much of a response is a positive thing compared to existing practice, but it's not an overall positive. I suspect they want to avoid a possible lawsuit for unlawfully ticketing legally parked people and hope this blows over because they "gracefully addressed" their (illegal) practices. A really great response would have been, ”Thanks for contact…

OP Here. This is an amazing response from a city agency. In the end of the day, agencies rarely interact directly with citizens. The normal response to someone analyzing your data is to close up and have no comment. The fact that they admit the mistake is huge, and big step forward for Open Data and agency interaction.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#16

Post by iquantny »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #6
jasonjei wrote: post #4

Did NYPD refund fines from erroneously paid citations?

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.

They admit wrongdoing in the quote.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#17

Post by iquantny »

gshulegaard wrote: post #13
parennoob wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 v…

Thanks for this.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#18

Post by [deleted] »

gshulegaard wrote: post #13
parennoob wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 v…

[deleted]

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#19

Post by 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.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#20

Post by twinkletwinkle »

fsaneq2 wrote: post #8

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.

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.

Post reply on HN