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

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

#91

Post by lazaroclapp »

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…

Sure. Which means that, similarly, a really great response from the public would be along the lines of "We greatly appreciate the data transparency program, the NYPD's responsiveness and the steps being taken to correct this going forward. We understand that any large organization dealing with literally millions of cases of parking violations is bound to make mistakes. All the same, we believe that people who were ticketed in error should be refunded. If there is no budget in place for the overhead of correcting this error, then perhaps a budget to that effect can be passed by the city. We will gladly put the extra few tax cents per person this year to see this corrected, if you will put the organizational effort to make it so and the process in place so that this will not easily repeat in the future."

One can imagine a stronger version of the above in which the agency is asked to find funds within their existing budget to redress the mistake. However, "thieves! they must be fired!" is not the correct response to public servants making an honest mistake (as opposed to dishonest mistakes, of course, but that doesn't seem to be the case at hand).

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

#92

Post by dingo_bat »

guelo wrote: post #51
thaumasiotes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

If it becomes illegal to pick your nose from today and you unknowingly pick your nose, would the police let you go? Would they "forgive" you for not knowing the law? That's right, they wouldn't. You would be caught and sentenced.

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

#93

Post by lotharbot »

XaspR8d wrote: post #75
lotharbot wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad went through something similar, though on a smaller scale. His van had a folding wheelchair lift on the back, which would block the view of the license plate from a distance but not from up close. Based on current law, this was perfectly legal, but some police officers had been trained otherwise in the past and hadn't received updated training like traffic agents had. Eventually, after he successfully conteste…

That's some beautiful self-referentiality. Here's a photo of your handbook, which contains a photo of this exact car. If only he could have made it appear recursive...

I wouldn't be surprised if he photographed the van with the photo in the window to submit to the police as an "updated" photo. He was a software engineer for a few decades and it would fit his sense of humor.

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

#94

Post by adrianratnapala »

Aloha wrote: post #69
msandford wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its not like the tickets were written in bad faith. There's been a huge proliferation of laws in the last ~20 years or so which are categorized as Strict Liability. Taxes have always been like this, but lately a lot of new laws have said "follow this or else" full stop. Since normal everyday citizens are being held to strict liability every day, I see no reason to be so forgiving of officers. I'm not suggesting tha…

The solution is to change the laws not "an eye for an eye.."

This is more than an eye for an eye: it is the PD that had its procedures wrong, and you are asking the victims to pay the cost (in terms of the time, money and risk involved in court procedings) of making it right.

In an argument where the authorities are using the cost of repayment as an "argument" -- that's pretty silly.

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

#95

Post by [deleted] »

mbrameld wrote: post #89
rsp1984 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I think a better analogy would be income taxes. If I make a mistake that causes the government to give me more money than I'm due they take it back whether I want to give it back or not. It should be the same when the government makes a mistake that causes me to give it more money than it's due.

[deleted]

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

#96

Post by sundvor »

thevibesman wrote: post #63

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 failin…

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).

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

#97

Post by 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.

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

#98

Post by nommm-nommm »

sundvor wrote: post #96
thevibesman wrote: post #63

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 failin…

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).

I don't know about Massachusetts but in my state you can look up arrest warrants and criminal citations online. All public information.

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

#99

Post by thedz »

ghaff wrote: post #19

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…

> 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.

If I owe my state or county taxes, or otherwise owe money, they will go through all sorts of hoops and efforts to track me down. Why is it reasonable to not expect that same level of effort when they owe me money?

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

#100

Post by coderintherye »

holdenc wrote: post #83

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.

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.
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