Last Updated on November 28, 2014 by Lawrence Berezin
Man shot over unpaid parking tickets by Lehigh County constable
Kevin McCullers, who had 31 outstanding parking tickets, was shot and paralyzed as he backed his car out of his driveway headed to Dunkin Donuts last week.
They never knocked on the door! No nothing! I just heard the gunshots! He pulled the car out of the garage and all I heard were gunshots,” said Hafeezah Muhammad, who added that McCullers, who was hit in the back, may not walk again. “For parking tickets?! It’s insane.”
Can data predict the areas tourists visit in NYC?
As readers to this blog can attest, I love this guy who tells wonderful stories with data he’s obtained from NYC Open Data. His name is Ben Wellington, and he is a professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
One of his recent stories tells us about predicting behavior of tourists by looking at NYC parking ticket data. For example, Professor Wellington opines:
It appears that Californians are very different from New Jerseyans. (Shock!) They seem to skip Manhattan for the most part and head right to Brooklyn neighborhoods like Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy.”
Professor Wellington’s stories effectuate positive change
You may recall the story about the undercover fire hydrant generating a bundle of bucks for the Evil Empire. As a result, the Department of Transportation quickly repainted both spaces to clearly indicate that they were illegal. As Wellington wrote, it was a small but important victory for open data.
…it is the proof that anyone can use Open Data, the internet and great sites like Reddit to improve our neighborhoods and our great city, one small discovery at a time.”
Commentary
The good, the bad, and the ugly about parking tickets. It is absolutely grotesque that a person was shot and paralyzed because of 31 unpaid parking tickets.
It’s great that data can tell a story that promotes change for the good of all of us.
It is ugly when traps are set for unsuspecting members of the driving public. For example:
- Scam NYC parking tickets are still being issued 5 years after the pedestrian ramp rule was changed to allow parking in front of certain pedestrian ramps
- Warriors are standing by during rush hour waiting to issue blocking the box parking tickets, instead of directing traffic
- We still can’t pass a law making life easier for the driving public on street cleaning days
- I’m still waiting for the Evil Empire to publish information on its re-designed website telling us the length of a NYC bus stop
Park safely.
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