Extremely Thorough Academic Study Confirms NYPD Park on Sidewalks

Last fall, Marcel Moran, a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, moved to Brooklyn so he could count cars parked on sidewalks outside police precincts. His goal was to create the most authoritative study to date documenting a routine fact of life every New Yorker knows: Cops park on sidewalks, which, for anyone else, is against the law and a $115 fine.

“It seemed like there were a lot of frustrations,” Moran said in a recent interview, referring to ample coverage in local media, particularly Streetsblog, as well as a dedicated Twitter feed called NYPD Parks On Our Sidewalks. “This kind of anecdotal documentation of it saying, oh, you know, this precinct is always like this, it’s miserable. And a parent with a stroller complaining in Queens, and, you know, a cyclist complaining in Brooklyn, that type of thing.” 

But there was no systematic study of the issue. So for a few months in the fall, Moran’s full-time job was to wake up, go to some precincts, and observe cars blocking sidewalks. His hypothesis was that the cops block the sidewalks in front of station houses in dense neighborhoods, but not necessarily throughout the city. He was wrong. 

At 70 of the 77 precincts Moran visited, across all five boroughs, cops were parked on the sidewalks, according to the study Moran published this week. They parked on the sidewalks outside the station house. They parked on the crosswalks near the station house. They parked on the sidewalks on blocks across from or adjacent to the station house. They parked with obviously fake placards displayed on the dash, even though placards do not offer any shield of immunity from parking laws. And they parked in such a way that they rendered sidewalks impassable, not just for people pushing strollers or using wheelchairs, but even for a pedestrian pushing or carrying nothing, by parking less than a foot from walls, fences, or buildings.

When asked to comment on the study, an NYPD spokesperson referred Motherboard to a recent city council hearing where Council Member Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side, raised the issue.

“Of course, we listen to our to the communities, we know that it’s a problem, we try our best in terms of just making sure officers park as appropriately as possible,” said Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.

“They don’t,” Brewer interrupted.

“I know, it’s difficult. A lot of people work at the precincts, there’s not enough parking spots,” Maddrey said.

“I think the extent and the egregiousness of the parking that I was investigating really surprised me,” Moran said. “I found precincts where three total blocks are just covered in sidewalk and crosswalk parking that just makes the crosswalk impassable. I think it’s one thing for a car to kind of roll its front tire briefly over the sidewalk when it’s in a loading zone or standing zone or that type of thing. It’s another thing to have a car just fully on the sidewalk in a way that a pedestrian needs to walk into traffic.”

It is illegal to do all of those things. According to the New York City municipal code, stopping, standing or parking on a sidewalk, crosswalk, traffic lane, or bicycle lane carries a $115 fine. And the NYPD does enforce it, at least the sidewalk part, with 32,789 tickets for parking on the sidewalk issued in the 2023 fiscal year so far.

But there is a clear zone of immunity in the areas around police precincts, Moran found, and a police culture that accepts and defends it. In some cases, it seems to extend beyond precincts. Eric Adams, former cop and current mayor, was observed driving and parking on the sidewalk outside his Brooklyn apartment while he was campaigning. As Brooklyn Borough President, Adams repeatedly defended his employees who parked on the sidewalks and pathways at Borough Hall. 

Aside from personally visiting each of the 77 precincts throughout the city, Moran analyzed Google Street View data to see how long the issue has been present. Across 703 street-imagery data points, Moran found 82 percent included parking on sidewalks or crosswalks, with an average going back 12 years. The only reason Moran cannot definitively say it has been going on longer is because the Google Street View data doesn’t go back any further. But a 1995 New York Times article that ran under the headline “Parking: Thin Blue Line of Disrespect” indicates it does.

Moran found this out for himself when he talked to New Yorkers about his work. “I would mention it to New Yorkers and, to a person, they would know what I was talking about, that, oh, yeah, it’s been a problem for years.”

Aside from the dangers and inconvenience to pedestrians, Moran said the general resignation to cops parking on sidewalks is emblematic of the larger tensions around policing in the city, in which elected officials sic more cops on transit systems and public places to quell a panic about public safety only for New Yorkers to observe those officers mostly standing around and playing on their cell phones. (Adams asked New Yorkers to send him photos of cops on their phones. People did; they got no reply.) For people who live near precincts, their most frequent interaction with the police will be observing them breaking the law, forcing them to walk in the street. It is as if, Moran said, all of the sidewalk and crosswalk parking rules have been permanently suspended around precincts.

“It’s a very subtle but kind of constant reminder of: some rules apply to me, and they don’t seem to apply around these areas,” he said.