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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

For people who skip straight to the comments: I couldn't fit it into the title, but the other half of the OP's title is that the author confronted the NYPD with his data analysis and they thanked him and spoke positively about the effect of open data:

> “Mr. Wellington’s analysis identified errors the department made in issuing parking summonses. It appears to be a misunderstanding by officers on patrol of a recent, abstruse change in the parking rules. We appreciate Mr. Wellington bringing this anomaly to our attention...

> Thanks to this analysis and the availability of this open data, the department is also taking steps to digitally monitor these types of summonses to ensure that they are being issued correctly.”*

Sure, it's easy to pay lip service to open data and transparency...but I've found for the most part that bureaucracies are generally OK with open data after it's been ingrained in their culture (which is why it is so amazingly easy to get data from Florida -- they have an IT system that is optimized to handle it -- the employees don't mind fulfilling the requests since it's no skin off their back).

Bloomberg got the ball rolling, and hopefully the momentum continues...I'd be happy with NYC agencies tolerating open data as a status quo...Looking forward to the day when bureaucrats and citizens can get to the point where transparency isn't seen as a zero-sum game.

View on HN

It's also substantial that this was all done from a database of tickets that the NYPD made available. It's easy to say "Oh sure, they talk a good game after the fact", but the decision to make the data publicly available in the first place seems like a serious show of good faith.

The fact that they thanked him means exactly zero if they don't give back the money that they got from people who were lawfully parked, but still got erroneously fined by the department for reasons that directly contradict existing law.

It is easy to give verbal apologies (especially using hedging words like “....recent, abstruse change in the parking rules.” If the police are so confused by abstruse changes in the parking rules, how are normal people supposed to understand and obey them?). Monetary ones are more difficult to come by.

[EDIT: To make it clear, I'm not saying the work of 'iquantny hasn't resulted in positive change. It obviously has. Just that the department's response is, in my opinion, not positive enough.]

Definitely...it's easy for a bureaucrat to say "Thanks for the help, we'll do better next time!" if no one's getting fired.

Yeah. I see what you're saying in the parent comment – even getting this much of a response is a positive thing compared to existing practice, but it's not an overall positive. I suspect they want to avoid a possible lawsuit for unlawfully ticketing legally parked people and hope this blows over because they "gracefully addressed" their (illegal) practices.

A really great response would have been, ”Thanks for contacting us. We realize that we were wrong for issuing these tickets. We will now put in place a program to refund the people who were wrongly issued tickets.”

OP Here. This is an amazing response from a city agency. In the end of the day, agencies rarely interact directly with citizens. The normal response to someone analyzing your data is to close up and have no comment. The fact that they admit the mistake is huge, and big step forward for Open Data and agency interaction.

I hope I'm not trivializing the value of your work. You have done the general public a great service by finding these erroneous citations. Thank you for that!

All I was saying is that there is a strong moral case for people who were wrongly fined in this manner to receive refunds on their fines, and I think the city agency should do that (but almost certainly won't).

I think it is a very positive thing that the OP accomplished. And yes, I think the city should pay back for the wrongly issued parking tickets.

The official admits there was an error and defines why it happened. This in itself opens the door for the wrongly ticketed parties to claim a refund, since their is the admission by the city official.

Now, who's going to inform those wrongly-ticketed citizens? Certainly not the city. It will cost more for them to re-analyze, and contact all of those people. They should, but it will not happen.

Great work by the OP! Glad to see NYPD in a positive light.

Slightly OT: I was born and raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and I remember people used to double-park, or do whatever they pleased, and rack up hundreds of dollars (thousands today) in parking tickets, and then bargain the total fine down to a fraction of the fines. It was cheaper than legally paying monthly parking rates!

I don't know about the specifics, but they should get the administrative "fees" back, which are typically claimed even when someone is not guilty.

The city certainly won't come forward and dish out the cash voluntarily. It would take a class action to accomplish the task. We'll see in the coming weeks/months if such an action takes form.

This may be illegal under sovereign immunity, though they could attempt to sue a county or municipality.

In Florida, a long-contested issue over red light cameras resulted in a judgement that having their tickets contested in special City Hall hearings, rather than through state traffic laws, was illegal. If a similar case is happening here, they could attempt that lawsuit, and if they win, then attempt their class-action.

You also have to get around statute of limitations and notice of claim limits for new york, not to mention shared liability. Remember: New York City parking violation tickets can be disputed as defective without going to court. You can even request an online hearing! So a court may throw out any argument that a class-action lawsuit might claim that it was unreasonable for _all_ of those people to be unable to file a dispute.

Interestingly, I found this brochure on their website that mentions code 67 (pedestrian ramps), but does not at all mention the exception for ramps in the middle of the street with no sign or marked walkway. It should really have been updated after 2008: http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/finance/downloads/pdf/translation...

Sure. Which means that, similarly, a really great response from the public would be along the lines of "We greatly appreciate the data transparency program, the NYPD's responsiveness and the steps being taken to correct this going forward. We understand that any large organization dealing with literally millions of cases of parking violations is bound to make mistakes. All the same, we believe that people who were ticketed in error should be refunded. If there is no budget in place for the overhead of correcting this error, then perhaps a budget to that effect can be passed by the city. We will gladly put the extra few tax cents per person this year to see this corrected, if you will put the organizational effort to make it so and the process in place so that this will not easily repeat in the future."

One can imagine a stronger version of the above in which the agency is asked to find funds within their existing budget to redress the mistake. However, "thieves! they must be fired!" is not the correct response to public servants making an honest mistake (as opposed to dishonest mistakes, of course, but that doesn't seem to be the case at hand).

Exactly, the proof in the pudding is if the author reruns his analysis a few years down the road with the expected outcome of a dramatic drop in tickets issued in those locations.

Anything else is just blowing smoke (EDIT: on the part of the government agencies)

OP Here. If you go through my blog, you'll see that I have pushed for change from many agencies. Scroll to bottom of article for list. And yes, I will be rechecking.

I respectfully disagree.

An error was identified, communicated, and acted upon as a result of open data. Specifically, it became known that due to inadequate training practices patrol officers were unawares of the change whereas parking enforcement were the only ones trained and therefore were not making the same mistake:

> "When the rule changed in 2009 to allow for certain pedestrian ramps to be blocked by parked vehicles, the department focused training on traffic agents, who write the majority of summonses."

> "Yet, the majority of summonses written for this code violation were written by police officers. As a result, the department sent a training message to all officers clarifying the rule change and has communicated to commanders of precincts with the highest number of summonses, informing them of the issues within their command."

So the issue isn't that police were confused so much as their training wasn't updated because of a system failure (training only traffic agents and not patrol officers).

Further they are taking action to monitor the open data themselves to detect future anomalies themselves:

> "Thanks to this analysis and the availability of this open data, the department is also taking steps to digitally monitor these types of summonses to ensure that they are being issued correctly."

This is a great step forward regardless of whether or not en-mass refund occur.

To me, a refund would be icing on the cake. And perhaps one will happen (hopefully) this post was published today (May 11, 2016) after all.

As an aside, there is also something to be said about the fact citizens should be aware of their own rights and laws. Any citizen could and should have contested wrongly issued tickets.

Thanks for this.

Please coordinate with http://www.donotpay.co.uk to help citizens challenge these illegal tickets.

Have you memorized the entirety of the law?

http://www.amlegal.com/codes/client/new-york-city_ny/

In a city where disagreeing with law enforcement's wrong or illegal activity risks violent reaction or death, it is not solely the citizen's obligation to correct law enforcement's mistakes.

Law enforcement tax the citizens to pay professionals to enforce laws. Those professionals have a duty to do their job properly.

I've always thought it was odd that ignorance of the law is no excuse for civilians breaking it, but is an excuse for police breaking it.

Heien vs. North Carolina

links are always better than not links for stuff like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heien_v._North_Carolina

A terrible decision

Did the person you're responding to delete the word "solely" from their comment?

> In a city where disagreeing with law enforcement's wrong or illegal activity risks violent reaction or death

People challenge infractions in court all the time. Theyre not in much danger. There is a process for this that involves courts and sometimes a lawyer.

You're conflating the judicial system with street interactions with the police, where contesting the NYPD is indeed a risky proposition.

> People challenge infractions in court all the time.

In New York City, most infractions are not challengeable in court. Unless you consider the city Finance Department a court or consider its commissioner a judge.

New York has only one, unified judiciary. The mayor and his commissioners are not part of it. The mayor and his commissioners are not judges.

That's a ridiculous statement.

Like any other bureaucracy, if you get a ticket or citation, you're free to contest it. This wasn't a systematic abuse of power -- it was a bureaucratic oversight.

> Have you memorized the entirety of the law?

The answer to that question is also the answer to the questions:

* Can you checkout the book of laws out of the library?

* Can you buy the book of laws on Amazon? Can you even afford to buy the book of laws?

Most law libraries do not let you check out their copies of the legal code. Also most law libraries tend to be in court buildings, and not at public library branches. My public library has lots of hours outside the normal 0900 to 1700, my city's law library is open from 0800 to 1700.

Your point about purchasing a paper copy of the legal code is spot on. In my state, I asked my local government workers (clerks, law librarians, etc) where to buy a copy of my state's code. There seems to be only one source and it costs more than 700 USD.

For someone who lives on the opposite side of town from the courthouse, or spends more on rent than a potential law book, reading law on paper can be impossible.

There are online versions, but somehow I think that most people wouldn't be willing to suffer through the mountains of legal text on their phones. The interfaces I've seen sometimes even break tab navigation by using javascript references to each item, making them a pain to use on a big screen.

> there is also something to be said about the fact citizens should be aware of their own rights and laws. Any citizen could and should have contested wrongly issued tickets.

As gohrt points out, this cannot be done. Being aware of the laws that apply to you in the US is far beyond any human capacity.

And I respectfully disagree with you.

Money has been taken from citizens by the authorities in an unlawful manner. Money has to be given back. I don't know what more to say about this matter. If I steal 200$ out of your pocket and you find out, my feeling is you would want your money back, not an apology and my heartfelt assurance that it won't happen again...

I am afraid it would cost $2M to try to pay back $1.7M... i think they should first spend their time and $$ in making sure they fix the issues going forward.

Find the money somewhere. Take it out of the police chief's pay for all I care. In fact, I don't think just returning the money is enough. The money should be returned with interest as if it were put into a municipal bond.

The worst part is that every time this happens, the taxpayers are on the hook. I think nothing will change as long as wrong decisions doesn't hurt the decision-makers. I don't know how to implement this but something has to give. When in doubt, officers should err on the side of not writing tickets.

Unrelated but our police officers need stronger protection from the insanity of things like quotas. Make it immensely profitable for an officer to whistleblow situations where they are required to collect $n in fines or write n tickets. Make it a federal law and take that money ($10MM per incidence per officer sounds like a good start, the point is it has to be high enough that there won't be peer pressure for an officer to "get in line") from the department. If they can't pay, too bad. The municipality/county doesn't deserve a police force.

> I am afraid it would cost $2M to try to pay back $1.7M

How much did it cost them to issue tickets and collect that $1.7 million? Do they use the same logic while issuing tickets and collecting fines?

Nobody cares how much more it costs you to do the right thing after the fact. Example paying a parking meter.

I wonder if they would accept this excuse after I "forgot" to pay a parking meter.

If I steal $200 worth of booze from the store they will spend thousands if not tens of thousand to prosecute me. Using this logic they should just take my apology and let me go with the booze.

But traffic tickets are just a game. The rules change, folks use the old rules sometimes mistakenly, should we go back and change the score? Also these are folks who didn't challenge it the first time around - are they going to get up in arms now? I'm guessing not.

Traffic tickets are not "just a game" and if you believe that then I challenge you to drive in a place where they aren't issued.

Laws change because we learn from experience and over time situations change.

But can you prove the money was innocent and lawfully acquired?

Wow I can't believe all the people disagreeing with you.

They unlawfully issued tickets, were made aware that they were unlawful, and don't want to refund the money ???

I must be taking crazy pills for people to think this is ok.

And further, using the excuse "it would cost more to refund than was collected" as the reason to not make right with the people wronged. How much is ticket in NYC? I'm betting it stings, and like here in Philadelphia, the cost of contesting a ticket (in lost wages, navigating a system very much meant to discourage you from contesting a ticket), especially for blue-collar workers, is less affordable than paying the ticket.

This is the NYPD - the most police-state police force in the country, responsible for such hits as Stop-And-Frisk, Eric Garner, and many other human rights abuses.[0]

You think they'd be so lenient with you if you offered them an apology?

Quick reminder about the title of the article - "The NYPD Was Systematically Ticketing Legally Parked Cars for Millions of Dollars a Year." Systematically.

[0] http://gothamist.com/2012/07/25/report_nypd_handling_of_occu...

What's the statute of limitations for such things in NY?

The very point of the statute of limitations is to limit how much of the present is spent digging up the past.

Hearings are not granted for tickets issued over 1 year ago.[0]

The owner must submit a Request for Hearing after Judgment form to fight the ticket. If the request for hearing after judgment is granted, the judge will hear the defense to the parking ticket. If the request is not granted, no hearing will be held and the total fine, interest, and penalties will be due.

[0]: http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/1652/fight-a-parki...

Do people think it's ok, or are we just at a point where "at least the theft stopped" is pretty much the most we expect?

I can absolutely believe that this happened by accident (it is a pretty subtle rule change), but that doesn't justify pocketing all of the cash it produced.

I'd likely cost more to refund the money than the value of it - and honestly, if you got a parking ticket in error, its up to you to contest it - its not like the tickets were written in bad faith.

> its not like the tickets were written in bad faith.

There's been a huge proliferation of laws in the last ~20 years or so which are categorized as Strict Liability. Taxes have always been like this, but lately a lot of new laws have said "follow this or else" full stop.

Since normal everyday citizens are being held to strict liability every day, I see no reason to be so forgiving of officers. I'm not suggesting that they're bad people, or deserve to go to jail for making an honest mistake. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander and if normal folks are being punished this way, so should law enforcement, politicians, etc. Nobody should be exempt, the law is the law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability_(criminal)

Can't up vote this enough."Ignorance of the law is not an excuse" is played out on the citizens of NYC (and elsewhere) on the daily. Don't let authority off so easy. Hold those that would hold you liable, liable.

> Ignorance of the law is not an excuse

Supreme Court says otherwise, if you're a cop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heien_v._North_Carolina

While that's an interesting (and somewhat concerning) result, it doesn't go as far as this case.

Heien was about meeting 4th Amendment probable cause standards to prosecute a different crime. This is about ticketing people over the non-criminal act out of ignorance. It's like if Heien had been fined over the brake lights even though they were legal.

As is, the NYC statue of limitations will strip most of these people of the right to contest tickets that were given for non-crimes.

The solution is to change the laws not "an eye for an eye.."

This is more than an eye for an eye: it is the PD that had its procedures wrong, and you are asking the victims to pay the cost (in terms of the time, money and risk involved in court procedings) of making it right.

In an argument where the authorities are using the cost of repayment as an "argument" -- that's pretty silly.

What? Lex talionis is punitive. Returning that which was wrongfully taken (i.e. stolen) is restorative and corrective.

However, in this case, returning the money with interest would be somewhat punitive, and that would indeed be appropriate, as it would discourage future carelessness in enforcement and abuse of the citizens of NY.

If you fail to pay all the taxes you owe, you are required to pay penalties. If the government fails to correctly enforce the law and wrongfully fines innocent citizens, why should it not be required to pay penalties?

This is the most basic way to hold government accountable for such carelessness. When a department fails to meet its budget because it did not correctly train its officers in the law, did not properly oversee enforcement, and now has to repay what it wrongfully took, those responsible for the oversight will be replaced with others more competent. As a result, the citizens have a more competent, ethical, accountable, and efficient government.

Wherever did you get the idea that, "Well, as long as you promise not to do it again..." is a sensible solution?

I think a better analogy would be income taxes. If I make a mistake that causes the government to give me more money than I'm due they take it back whether I want to give it back or not. It should be the same when the government makes a mistake that causes me to give it more money than it's due.

Your analogy doesn't really work because while there is all this outrage by some people here, I haven't actually seen evidence so far of the NYPD refusing to issue refunds.

The thing is, there doesn't seem to be a cheap and automatic way to (a) accurately filter out all incorrect tickets and (b) track the people down who were wrongfully ticketed. (Yes, analyzing the thousands of different parking spots where tickets were issued for their legality is an expensive process - and there's bound to be a very long tail.) So it seems pretty clear to me that attempting a proactive refund would be an expensive waste of money.

Yes, the police are responsible for doing their job right, and that's what they're doing now. It would sure feel great to punish some scapegoat in hindsight, but this is a classic case where it's difficult to pin the blame - remember, it was a systemic problem where one (small) subgroup of officers failed to be properly trained after a rules change.

People who have been wrongfully ticketed should contest the ticket, it's as simple as that.

>analyzing the thousands of different parking spots where tickets were issued for their legality is an expensive process

With data about exact location of where each ticket was issued, it wouldn't have to be expensive.

It's not difficult to pinpoint blame and there is no scapegoat.

"Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct seems to have the most cars wrongly ticketed, bringing in over $100,000 in fines a year. The 77th, also in Brooklyn, comes in second:"

That's not an oversight. That's a systematic abuse of the public trust. How about people that didn't know they were wrongfully ticketed and fined? How about people that couldn't take the time off to dispute the ticket? Its extortionate.

I hope the next time you are on the wrong side of a municipal fine you remember you remember your glib words. Its as simple as that.

that is one conclusion , other is that those two have the most parking spots affected by the change of the law so proportionally they made more mistakes

Way to miss the point. Different precincts having different proportions is not the issue.

Anyone that lives in NYC is well aware that, no matter what the commish says, the officers on the ground do whatever they think they can get away with. It's not at all surprising to learn that intentionally wrongful parking tickets are a huge source of revenue for the PD.

It can be argued that money was freely given by people who were issued tickets because they didn't want to deal with challenging the ticket in court.

I've done the same (got an open container ticket on the boardwalk in coney island, where they sell beer. the cop said you have to drink it within 20ft of the establishment that sold it). Admittedly, in that particular case they dismissed the fine and sent me my check back.

My dad went through something similar, though on a smaller scale. His van had a folding wheelchair lift on the back, which would block the view of the license plate from a distance but not from up close. Based on current law, this was perfectly legal, but some police officers had been trained otherwise in the past and hadn't received updated training like traffic agents had. Eventually, after he successfully contested a few tickets, the police department used a picture of his van in their training manuals -- and he put that picture in his back window, with a label for what page of the manual it was in, and stopped getting tickets.

That's some beautiful self-referentiality. Here's a photo of your handbook, which contains a photo of this exact car. If only he could have made it appear recursive...

I wouldn't be surprised if he photographed the van with the photo in the window to submit to the police as an "updated" photo. He was a software engineer for a few decades and it would fit his sense of humor.

Sneaky/easy version, he'd just photoshop his displayed page to have that in the photo.

He'd be displaying a fake page, identical in all details, except for the recursion. "You won't believe the one difference in this ..."

If a lack of training is the reason for these erroneous tickets, perhaps the parking regulations are not simple enough or communicated well enough. If a patrol officer requires training to intepret the regulations, what level of understanding can we expect from a driver?

It seems to me, if there was a bug in a company system that charged customers when they should not have, I don't think you can just say "sorry" and not pay the money back.

I would be appalled if people here on HN were applauding a company for apologizing for effectively stealing money and not returning it. What is the difference?

What's the point of open data if there is no accountability?

So far a blogger received an email with an apology. That's not much to get excited about.

What's to stop them from carrying on as usual if there are no repercussions and only millions in revenue for them to collect?

Two things. Firstly I am pretty impressed that they thanked him and see the work as positive (sadly, that is not the typical reaction) and secondly I'm pretty sure refunds will happen because that was their response. The typical response leaves plausible deniability this answer does not imo. Anything police related is usually keenly aware of the legal ramifications of such statements thus I believe the intention is to pay up.

It's hard to read between the lines, especially from afar, but their motivation to put a positive spin on it could also be political. The phrase "a recent, abstruse change in the parking rules" caught my eye. Maybe they are using these revelations to support an ongoing spat over said rules.

Line between "putting a positive spin" and "doing a positive thing" can be quite blurry — in this case, I honestly think it's a combination of the two. Of course, beurocrats and politicians often act out of selfish motivations, thinking about public perception instead of public good — but if this motivation leads to them serving public good, what's the difference?

Yeah, this. NYC issues ~$500 mil in parking tickets per year. If this were a rational issue, someone would look at that and say "Wow. We must be doing something wrong, this is way too many tickets written. Are the street signs clear enough?"

I'm kind of making fun, but they don't want to fix the problem because those tickets are a genuine revenue stream for the city. When the revenue from parking tickets goes down, everyone panics.

See http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/06/news/economy/nypd-tickets/

A different rational response could be to raise parking ticket prices.

I live in NYC. Parking here is so expensive that paying for a parking ticket (if you happen to get caught parking illegally) is cheaper than paying for the parking garage!

A monthly parking garage in my neighborhood (west village, manhattan) can cost $700-800. Parking on the street is not a perfect substitute, but I can get 10-12 parking tickets a month before the cost of parking illegally exceeds the cost of paying for garage space!

Haha, we do this in Miami Beach too. Some streets will tow you, but the others, just a chance of a $17 ticket if you pay within 30 days.

Parking is so expensive and hard to find (like half of the area is parking for "resident sticker only") that most people I know simply park in the residential areas and see what happens.

Making garage space more valuable. Not much further to go before the care and maintenance of a sedan chair becomes economically viable.

I have gotten better at reading signs, but I remember when I first started driving down to NYC several years back. I got a parking ticket that was for $120. I remember trying to read the sign, and I could not make heads or tails of it. Now I just end up paying for garage parking. It can be a waste of money if your there for only 2 hours, but its still better than forking out $120.

Here is the actual rule: §4-08(f)(7) Pedestrian ramps. Alongside or in a manner which obstructs a curb area which has been cut down, lowered or otherwise constructed or altered to provide access for persons with disabilities at a marked or unmarked crosswalk as defined in subdivision (b) of §4-01 of this chapter. A person may stop, stand or park a vehicle alongside or in a manner which obstructs a pedestrian ramp not located within such crosswalk, unless otherwise prohibited.

I'm not surprised that people are having a hard time with it. What does it really say? After reading it 3 or 4 times, I was sure you made a typo. Then I realized you probably copy and pasted it, so it's not a typo.

In the end, I finally concluded that it is legal to park across a disabled access spot in the curb unless it's in a crosswalk or otherwise prohibited.

Which is contrary to common sense, IMO... But then, that's probably why they decided to codify it.

> Which is contrary to common sense, IMO

Its not contrary to common sense - ramps are needed at crosswalks so people can cross the street. A ramp in the middle of the street, with no crosswalk around, is not needed.

You are assuming that the only reason someone in a wheelchair might have to go between the sidewalk and the street is to access a crosswalk to cross the street. That is an incorrect assumption.

Vehicles that carry wheelchairs often load and unload the wheelchair from the street in the rear of the vehicle. Ramps in the middle of the street help people in wheelchairs to enter and leave such vehicles without having to go all the way to a crosswalk.

Quick tangent - the reason why we have so many news-from-the-weird stories involving a "Florida Man" is because Florida has an unparalleled history of open government. Every email, every meeting, and (most importantly for funny news) every police report can be known by anyone who asks for them. Along with the fact that Florida is the 3rd most populous state, the result is the excellent @_FloridaMan Twitter account.

are people going to get their money back?

This is the real question. It is easy to admit you made a mistake when there isn't much in the way of consequences.

The problem with anything that can solve complicated rules and changes to them is that it can really help perpetuate the use of complicated rules. :-(

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