Too bad that does not apply to cops and other city workers who clog the streets of Chinatown with their illgally parked cars! When Good Cops Park Badly By Sarah Ferguson April 26, 2006 Chinatown residents and business owners fired off another salvo in downtown Manhattan's street parking wars. They held a press conference Wednesday morning to tout a new report by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives which documents just how bad the abuse of free street parking privileges by police, court officers and other municipal workers has become in lower Manhattan. On March 29, two TA volunteers were detained and questioned by police for photographs of cars parked on the sidewalk outside the 5th Precinct in Chinatown as part of this survey. But that didn't deter the rest of the TA team, who managed to document a whopping 115 illegally parked cars blocking sidewalks, crosswalks, and fire hydrants between 9 and 10 o'clock that morning, in a five-block area bounded by Canal Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, Centre Street, and the Bowery. More than 90 percent of the illegally parked cars had city-issued placards that permit free street parking for police and government employees when on "official business." But those placards aren't supposed to be all-day pbuttes for city workers who simply commute to work and back, and they don't give anyone the right block sidewalks, hydrants, or crosswalks. (The rules are clearly spelled out on the back of this NYPD-issued placard obtained by the Voice.) -- - Slim
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