Results tagged “parkingplacard”

The NY Post is clinging to Rabbi Leib Glanz like a tenacious dybbuk. After exposing the perks he arranged for Jewish inmates at the Manhattan Detention Complex—from allowing one to throw his son's bar mitzvah at the Tombs to allegedly allowing sex with female prisoners—Rabbi Glanz resigned. But the Post is still all over him, and on Friday they caught him using an official Uniformed Firefighters Association placard.

Responding to the glut of city employees' parking placards—which let them park for free at meters and many off-limits areas—last year the mayor's office managed to cut the 144,160 placards by over 20 percent. To accomplish this goal, the city consolidated control over the placards with the NYPD; formerly each city agency got to dole out their own. The NYPD's point person for determining which officers got placards was Lt. Jemal Doute, the head of the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau's Vehicle Placard Unit—until recently, when it was discovered that a female friend of Doute's obtained one of the "older" models of the placards through Doute.

Yesterday morning, a fire broke out in an apartment building in the Fordham section of the Bronx, and when the firefighters responded, there was a car—with an "official NYPD placard issued to cops"— blocking the hydrant. The Post reports "frustrated firefighters had to rely on handheld fire extinguishers to put out the kitchen blaze." Four young children were treated for smoke inhalation at a local hospital—and a cat was given oxygen on the scene! While the FDNY said it wasn't clear whether the hydrant-blocking car was a cop's car, "another fire official at the scene told The Post it was an unmarked police vehicle." Still, a Post photographer who tried to snap a picture of the placard itself "was forced to move away by cops." The car was towed and moved to the 52nd Precinct, probably to keep from the angry neighbors egging it—they told the Post, "Why would you leave your car where people need to get water in case of an emergency?" and "If it was an off-duty cop, he should have known better."

Last year the Bloomberg administration made a big deal about reducing the number of parking placards issued to city employees, slashing them by over 25,000. At the time, the cutback on permits, which allow cops, civil servants, and other lucky bureaucrats to park almost anywhere, was heralded by Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives as “a good first step. But the final analysis will be weeks and months from now, when we see how actively these plaques are enforced."

Chalk up another one for tabloid journalism: On the same day that the Daily News published galling photos of a former MTA board member illegally parking with a police-issued parking permit, the so-called "perk jerk" surrendered the placard—which he was supposed to do last year. Alan Friedberg, who hasn't been on the MTA board since 2003, was photographed on Sunday parking his Jaguar in a restricted zone near Times Square. Last year the MTA cut back on the number of authority-issued permits by 15% to 295, and Friedman was one of three board members who had failed to give back the perk. In justifying his ongoing air of entitlement to the News, he explained that he was a "pretty heavy worker" while serving on the board.

On Monday we took a closer look at Kimora Lee Simmons not-quite-legal parking placard. Not surprisingly, it turns out the diva doesn't do much "official business" for the city, but rather uses the permit for choice parking spots in front of her favorite shops. Shocking.

Kimora Lee Simmons is often on official business...shopping! The NY Post caught her out and about with a possibly illegal parking permit recently. Their "eagle-eyed lensman" saw Simmons and boyfriend Djimon Hounsou "shopping at the swanky department store Barneys late last week while her driver dutifully stood guard outside Simmons' Cadillac Escalade, which had a New York Correction Department placard on its dashboard."