Pol hits cops over parking pass abuses

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson is taking the NYPD to task over parking placard abuse.

Johnson introduced a package of bills during a Transportation Committee meeting Wednesday, which would take major steps to crack down on city officials who abuse their placard privileges.

NYPD Executive Director of Legislative Affairs Oleg Chernyavasky testified at the meeting, arguing that the department is already increasing its enforcement of parking corruption and that Johnson’s proposal was full of holes.

Johnson was having none of it.

“This is irresponsible, it is dangerous and it is selfish behavior,” Johnson said. “The days of giving a free pass on illegal parking is over.”

There are currently some 144,000 city-issued parking placards in circulation, according to the Department of Transportation.

Johnson’s legislation would restrict placarded cars from parking in bike lanes, bus lanes, crosswalks, sidewalks and in front of fire hydrants in nonemergency situations, and would require traffic enforcement officers to have cars towed that violate that rule.

It would also require cops to directly respond to 311 complaints for placard abuse, forcing the Police Department to blitz 50 areas a week that have a high number of reports.

Chernyavasky noted that the department issued more than 54,000 summonses for placard abuse in 2018 — a 30% increase from 2017 — and towed the cars of nearly 900 placard scofflaws. He further claimed the NYPD does not have the capacity to tow all of the cars that would violate the law under Johnson’s bill.

Johnson asked Chernyavasky if he believed that placard abuse was a form of corruption.

“Sure,” said Chernyavasky. “Any kind of abuse of government privileges could be viewed through that lens.”