Last Updated on April 11, 2022 by Lawrence Berezin
Parking ticket news you may not know about
There is so much daily parking ticket news, that it’s hard to digest all the stories.
Here are some items that got my attention. Likewise, I hope they grab yours.
Parking ticket news about vigilante idling bounty hunters
I love a great western. Steve McQueen was my all-time favorite. Meanwhile, can you remember the name of the show?
I love a fantastic posse chase scene. That’s where the sheriff leads a posse and rides after the bad guys. Likewise, my favorite posse was the one in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
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The NYC Council has empowered the townsfolk to hunt down people who idle their engines. And the Council has offered a bounty for information leading to the conviction of the illegal engine idlers.
The New York City Administrative Code, Title 24, Section 24-163 establishes that no person should allow the engine of a motor vehicle to idle for longer than three minutes while parking, standing, or stopping. However, there are two exceptions to this rule. The exceptions apply to the following:
- Legally authorized emergency motor vehicles, and
- Vehicles whose engine is used to operate a loading, unloading, or processing device.
In addition, the legal idling time is reduced from three minutes to one minute around public and private school facilities as set forth in the Local Law of the City of New York Number 5 for the year 2009.
Businesses in the construction industry and commercial, cultural, and manufacturing establishments that own, rent, and/or use motor vehicles should become familiar with the Idling Regulations. Failure to comply with Idling Regulations might result in significant financial penalties, as set forth in the Rules of the City of New York (RCNY) Title 15, Air Code Penalty Schedule. Please refer to the links below under Additional Information to download the Air Code Penalty Schedule.
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Here are some more resources to read and react to:
- “NYC will pay you big bucks for ratting out idling trucks, buses“-NY Post
- The NY Times wrote an article about engine idling bounty hunters
- Dear Diary: How I Caught My First Idler-Streetsblog NYC
Citizens Air Complaint Program
A thoughtful friend of the New York Parking Ticket, Clem, recently dropped a comment on our website about these bounty hunters.
There’s a problem with this vigilante-enforced law. The vigilantes are unaware of their obligation to document that the offending truck was not entitled to idle due to its running power equipment (platform lift, cargo box refrigeration, or heating system) that requires the engine to run during the operation of said equipment. Summonses are issued, in one case I’m aware of first-hand, as much as two years or more after the fact with no interim notice given to the offending party!
clem
Larry’s comment
I oppose all laws/rules that pay money to the townsfolk to hunt down their neighbors or visitors to report high crimes or misdemeanors, including engine idling. We have a police force of about 52,000 trained professionals and a team of 2300 or more parking ticket warriors. What, now we need 8M vigilantes?
I don’t think so!
Pending law before NYC Council
Prohibiting Reserve parking law
This bill would prohibit a person from using a vehicle to reserve a parking space on a public street and would prohibit a person from continuously parking a vehicle in the same location on a street or roadway for more than five consecutive days. It would also require the Department of Transportation to conduct outreach to alert vehicle owners and relevant stakeholders of these changes.
NYC Council
Can people with COVID-19 Special Parking Permits park in the Garment District?
A driver posed the above question.
4-08(l)(4). Parking in the garment district is restricted to trucks.
Notwithstanding any provisions of these rules to the contrary, no vehicles except trucks and vans bearing commercial plates shall stand at the curb for the purpose of expeditiously loading and unloading between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. daily, including Sundays, from 35th Street to 41st Street, between Avenue of the Americas and 8th Avenue, all-inclusive, in the Borough of Manhattan. For the purpose of this paragraph (4), passenger vehicles or station wagons bearing commercial plates shall not be
deemed trucks or vans.
The Covid-19 Parking Privileges PDF provides the answer.
Commentary
Miles to go before we sleep.
Larry,
I just got off the phone this morning after my first experience defending a No-Idling citizen complaint from NYC DEP on behalf of the company I work for. The judge was fair and cordial and allowed both myself and the DEP representative to give our “evidence”. I had already done all of the necessary research on the statute and the exemptions from the rule, so I was well-prepared with documents and photos to defend our case. Not so the DEP rep. His citizen-shot phone video was grainy to the point of being impossible to view at times, and the complainant suspiciously avoided showing the one angle that would have shown the external parts of the cargo compartment heating unit; however, they did inadvertently show the hot air duct that leads from the heating unit along the wall of the cargo compartment that distributes heat from the unit to the cargo area that holds our shipments of tropical plants and poinsettias at that time of year (late November of 2019). And when the judge asked him about the exceptions permitted under the statute, he adamantly refused to admit what he himself had uploaded as evidence of our “crime”: the DEP rule that clarified the language in the law pertaining to permitted exceptions. He insisted that “heating and air conditioning equipment” did not qualify as exemptions that permitted idling; I pointed to the line previous to that which reads:
“2. a system that controls the environment of temperature-sensitive cargo or substances, including but not limited to food, provided that such cargo or substances are being transported in a vehicle designed for the transportation of such cargo or substances.”
The judge asked the DEP guy, “this appears to support the defendant’s claim of the cargo compartment heating system being a permitted exempted use”, but the guy was in too deep and refused to back off, even when I pointed out that the line he was leaning so heavily on referred NOT to the cargo compartment but to the driver’s cab (“…cabin comfort”).
Pretty sure I kicked their butts on this one, but I’ll have to wait for the decision to arrive in the mail. The most infuriating part of this process, aside from the butchery of due process resulting from the 29-month lapse between the date of the “offense” and when we received the summons (11/30/19, months before Covid shut down City offices), was the fact that we were not able to review the DEP’s evidence (the video) until the hearing was well underway. In no other adversarial procedure would one party be unable to be (a) confronted by the accuser or (b) access physical evidence to be presented at the adjudication hearing (unless you count red light and speed camera summonses, that is).
New York…just like I pictured it…
Larry, I thought you’d appreciate hearing this new bit of news about our no-idling case. We won our case before an OATH hearing officer on a telephone hearing with a DEP lawyer who didn’t even know his own department’s rule issued in June, 2022 that permits idling by vehicles running processing equipment necessary for the loading/unloading and environmental control of perishable cargo. Today we got in the mail a form that appears to be DEP appealing the decision against them.
First, OATH is an agency of the City of New York. They hear the cases generated by the DEP, which is also an agency of the City of New York (no conflict of interest there, hm?). Despite that apparent conflict, we won our case on the merits because we knew the law and the DEP rules and the DEP lawyer didn’t.
Now DEP is appealing a “Not Guilty” verdict. In a criminal case, you cannot appeal a not guilty verdict because it would be a violation of the Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy. Apparently that isn’t so in the People’s Republic of New York City.
As Willie Shakespeare might have put it, “Methinks the fix is in” or “there’s something rotten in the City of New York”. God help us all.
Clem,
Great story. There’s nothing more embarrassing to a lawyer than being unprepared.
Shame on the DEP. If this issue is important to the DEP, why not handle it properly?
Please, keep us posted, Clem.
Regards,
Larry