It is illegal to park your car on the sidewalk in New York City. Typically, a violation would lead to a $115 parking ticket, or sometimes a summons.

However, the same law seemingly excludes one group of drivers. Although the 311 hotline exists for New Yorkers to file illegal parking complaints, the NYPD, which is supposed to keep the sidewalks clean, has a record of ignoring these complaints—especially when it comes to their personal vehicles.

“The rampant illegal parking turns the whole block into an occupation zone.” wrote the owner of the Twitter account @NYPD_Parking in an email interview. They added that these illegally parked vehicles have endangered those who live in the neighborhood, forcing elders, people with disabilities, and parents with strollers off the sidewalk and into street traffic.

Besides parking on sidewalks, police vehicles are officers' personal vehicles could also be seen parked in front of fire hydrants, on the crosswalk, or sometimes, double parked on streets and blocking road traffics.

By mapping 311 parking complaints within 100-meter radius of NYPD precincts in New York City. It appears that some precincts are the worst offenders.

In Cobble Hills, Brooklyn, residents around the 76th police precinct had filed about 1,300 complaints about cars parked on sidewalks.

However, 311 data showed that police officers at 76th precinct rarely take these complaints seriously. Over a quarter of 311 complaints were closed under 3 minutes. About half were closed in 7 minutes.

Many New Yorkers turned to social media to voice their complaints.

Since March 2019, contributors to an Twitter account @NYPD_Parking have reported more than 3,800 complaints of illegally parked police vehicles to 311. The NYPD closed 84% of their complaints with the response “police action not necessary” or “no evidence of violation.” Only 9 complaints (0.2%) led to a parking ticket being issued.

“Complaints are often closed with responses lying about the vehicles being gone or taking action to fix the problem,” wrote the contributors of an account @placard_abuse in an email interview.

Falsely filing a police report, which includes the response to 311 service requests, can be charged as a misdemeanor or felony according to state law. Yet, several accounts that report police parking violations said that the police might have lied about fixing the issue.

Check out parking complaints filed around all NYPD precincts:

Since 2020, the city council has been calling the NYPD in for hearings on illegal parking among the police force. When asked about the NYPD’s parking violations during a council meeting this March, Chief of NYPD Jeffrey Maddrey responded that “there’s not enough parking spots.”

Many New Yorkers expressed their fustration with the Chief’s response to police parking violations, some calling Maddery's response "a blatant lie."

“This is what someone says when they think law and order is secondary to their own personal convenience. No one else is so entitled that they take a job in NYC, and expect they can just drive right up and park their personal car in front of the building.”

Currently, NYPD residency requirements allow police officers to live in nearby counties, making driving a must for officers living outside the five boroughs. Advocates suggest that requiring the police to live in the city could challenge the status quo, as officers would be able to rely on public transportation to commute instead of driving to work.

Some also believe that a citizen enforcement program would force police officers to comply with parking regulations.

In June 2022, the City Council introduced a bill that would allow New Yorkers to file civilian complaints of parking violations directly to the Department of Transportation via a mobile app. The original bill included an offer too good to be true: rewarding 25% of the ticket revenue to the complainant. Yet, both the DOT and NYPD publicly had spoken against the bill, citing that it would “turn neighbors against each other.”

The 25% reward feature has been cut off from the revised bill. However, some accounts called the bill “toothless,” fearing that the civilian reporting program might duplicate the 311 system—a system that puts no constraint on the police in their experience.

“It's essentially an unsolvable problem—without the energy of the mayor behind a solution,” Mintz said. “Our last mayor was afraid to challenge the police. And the current mayor actually is very supportive of the police. I think it’s just evidence of the structural disintegration of the functioning of the city.”

Learn more about the data analysis for this project.