Abreu questions NYPD on illegal parking around police precincts

I'm going to ask my last question of this hearing before I turn it over to my colleagues, and that's for PD.

For years, there has been consistent photographic evidence that streets surrounding NYPD precincts are inundated with illegally parked cars.

This parking behavior has cascading impacts in the surrounding community for pedestrians, residents, and local businesses.

These problems have been so longstanding that there are now academic studies looking into the street safety issues surrounding our police precincts.

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, they are finding evidence that pedestrian safety is worse near police precincts.

In my district on 100th Street, there's, kid you not, there's a sign

in spray paint telling the NYPD on that block the days of alternate side parking for the cars to be gone, and it signs off DSNY.

I don't know if it's true that DSNY used spray cans to let another government agency that needs to move its cars on certain dates, but this is an issue.

That is pervasive in our city.

What is the agency's position on it?

Do you recognize that it is a problem?

I'll start there.

So parking, obviously, in the city and around our precincts can be challenging.

And it is something that we absolutely do recognize and take efforts to address.

Our standards and assessment section is conducting daily command visits.

We're evaluating our parking compliance.

We're evaluating that at department facilities.

So it's something we look into and that we're trying to make sure that we meet all of our guidelines.

Where we don't meet those guidelines, the SAS, the standards and assessment section, is going to be documenting that.

Those findings are reported to department leadership.

What's being done to address, I mean, do you recognize that it is a problem?

Absolutely.

It's a real challenge to park in these areas.

I mean, there's just a limited amount of space.

It's a real issue.

So when you say challenging, is that a justification for the illegal parking?

No, and as I said, it's something that we take seriously.

And as I just walked through, you know, there are steps that we take to try to make sure that we're in compliance.

And when there's indications of misuse of parking permits, those parking permits can be revoked.

There could be other discipline as well.

What are you doing to address these issues?

So I mentioned the standards assessment section is conducting those daily command assessments.

All that information that they're collecting, that's going to be reported up to department leadership.

So we're looking at this command by command.

Those are coming on a daily basis.

We're looking at our parking and making sure that we're

We're in compliance with our guidelines.

And whether it departures from that, that's something that gets escalated.