NYPD Parking Cronyism as a Lodestar for Institutional Corruption

grendel-khan highlights an issue objectively banal yet vitally relevant to the issue of police abuse. It’s about the practice of parking placards issued by New York City, ostensibly for use only for official city business. In practice, it acts as a fringe benefit to NYPD officers allowing them to park their personal vehicle anywhere they want in the city without consequence. There have been calls to crack down on this practice, but those efforts went nowhere and instead have only offended and angered the police in the process.

I think this is a perfect illustration of the issue. If losing extraordinary parking privileges results in this much consternation from those affected, it is indicative how difficult it would be to implement any remotely robust policy change.

This is why I think the refrain that "only" 9 unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019 is a red herring. The concern is that when cops act homicidal with impunity while a camera is running, what about when there are no witnesses? This case from DC has stayed with me for a while. The video shows two cops lifting a guy off a wheelchair and slamming him into the ground. They tried to charge him with assault on a peace officer. This video shows you the footage while also comparing it to what the police report claimed.

It is completely inexcusable that any of these cops are employed in any capacity in law enforcement. They egregiously lied, and they only got caught because a camera was running. Without that footage, he very likely would've been convicted of a felony, served time in prison, served time in probation, and thereafter risk further incarceration because of his criminal background. Now multiply that interaction with the hundreds of others they have had. And multiply that with the innumerous other cops who similarly feel leeway to lie to this extent with impunity. There is no system in place to ferret them out and keep them out of law enforcement.