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

Post by parennoob » Wed, May 11, 2016, 11:44 PM UTC

iquantny wrote: post #15

parennoob wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, May 11, 2016, 11:47 PM UTC

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #20

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 by darpa_escapee » Wed, May 11, 2016, 11:49 PM UTC

iquantny wrote: post #16

darpa_escapee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by gohrt » Wed, May 11, 2016, 11:56 PM UTC

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…

Post by fsaneq2 » Thu, May 12, 2016, 12:06 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #23

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.