Cop Car Tires Slashed Near Heavily-Ticketed Shopping Center

This shaky surveillance video shows an unidentified man brazenly slashing the tires of three NYPD Parking Enforcement cars in broad daylight on Monday in Parkchester. (It was either very windy out, or the surveillance cam was afraid it would be slashed next, because it can't stop trembling!) The cars were parked outside a Bronx parking enforcement headquarters near the Westchester Square shopping district, were merchants say parking ticket blitzes are driving away their shoppers.

"It's killing us," says Marco Rossetti, co-owner of Frank and Joe's Deli in Westchester Square. He tells the Daily News, "It's wrong, but I can understand his frustration. Truthfully, we're not given a chance. Their office is located directly above us. The agents come down 10, 15 at a time, stand in front of my store. People that pull over don't get a second to stop." And John Bonizio, president of the Association of the Merchants and Business Professionals of Westchester Square, says, "I'm not surprised that frustration would run that high, and that people would attempt to lash back out at enforcement in an improper manner."

Of course, it's unclear whether the perp in this instance was retaliating over parking tickets, but this isn't the first time the vehicles have been targeted. About a year ago, vandals started breaking windshields of NYPD. Parking Enforcement cars parked in the area. Police are currently looking for a black man of medium build who sped away in a gray mini van, presumably with a stack of unpaid parking tickets spilling out of his glove box.

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By John Del Signore in News on December 3, 2009 3:50 PM

Comments [rss]

tom9d

That's not Parkchester like it says in the first line. It's Westchester Square, like it says throughout the rest of this post. Just fyi.

S.K.

and i thought Jimmy Justice was a white guy.

potsmoker

lets be serious here, those are parking enforcement cars.

they are not cop cars. i dont care if they are under the NYPD, it wasnt always like that.

now if they just did that to all the cars in the bike lanes, people will learn their lesson.

slashing the tires of metermaids outside their hq isnt going to affect anyone since its city property and not going to change any behavior.

slashing the tires of bike lane blockers now thats a change i can believe in. i in no way endorse slashing tires and only remind people that slashing the side of the tire cannot be fixed unlike a puncture in the actual thread that can be plugged with a quick visit to the local flatfix shop. again im not telling people to slash tires, because they might get a beatdown, unless the car is parked unattended and you can ride away on your bike. but thats wrong too, and i wouldnt do that, i wouldnt endorse that, and i wouldnt encourage that, seriously.

thats just wrong, its not like those tires and those people who disregard marked bike lanes deserve that, they dont and you dont deserve to have to go into traffic to move around them, but you still shouldnt do that, so dont say i told you to do it. im not. but if you do i got nothing to do with it ok!

Vertigone

I love the remix treatment at 1:43.

NannyState

Looks like Parking Enforcement will have to write more tickets to pay for the damage. And the Cycle of Life goes on...

hotstepper

vigilante justice is awesome.

FrankMartin

I don't disagree but it isn't vigilante justice. Vigilantes and vigilante justice illegally punishes criminals for their crimes, most often people are driven to this by the lack of action by cops etc. Death Wish, The Punisher etc

I'd call this civil disobedience, which is also awesome.

EricRoberts

It's awesome except that we all get to pay for the new tires.

hotstepper

interesting take on the word. not to devolve too heavily into semantics i think Merriam-Webster's broad definition works well for my purposes:

"a self-appointed doer of justice"

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/VIGILANTE