By: Jared Evan
A watchdog group for drivers that specializes in monitoring parking tickets believes that NYC is illegally altering tickets by filling in information police officers mistakenly left out on the original ticket with a fully completed version available online, The NY Post reported.
Tickets that are incorrectly filled out by the issuing police officer or traffic agent — such as omissions or inaccuracies in describing the car, the location or the officers name can be thrown out by a judge.
Glen Bolofsky, president of ParkingTicket.com claims to have thousands of examples of this action and when this happens the driver can no longer fight the ticket by siting the left-out information.
When the person issues the ticket goes to fight the ticket on the Department of finance website, the new completed ticket is there and can no longer be fought on the basis of missing information.
Bolofsky claims his auditors found some 220,000 “altered” tickets dating back to 2014.
When there’s more than one version of the ticket containing different information, the ticket is illegal,” Bolofsky told The Post. “When you get a parking ticket, you have one shot to bring on your best possible defense. The city also gets one shot to write the ticket. By altering the tickets, they are getting an unfair advantage.”
The city makes millions upon millions in revenue from parking tickets and it is conceivable they want every penny possible. Under the de Blasio regime driving in general has been attack, with large bus lanes replacing traffic lanes and a tremendous push being made towards cycling with bike lanes being added all over the 5 boroughs, E hail services ( like Uber) have also consistently been heavily regulated by the current city administration.
The City raked in $993 million in fines in 2016, according to the most recent available numbers, mostly through “quality of life penalties” like littering and noise. Parking tickets accounted for 55 percent of all fines, however, increasing the city’s revenue by $545 million.
The Post reported on one case of an altered parking ticket: Richard Brienza, who has a fleet of delivery vans and trucks, said one of his drivers received a $115 ticket for “no standing” in front of 165 W. 48th St. However, the ticket didn’t include the time or date of the offense. Several weeks later, when the summons was uploaded to the city website, the NYPD-issued ticket read that the violation occurred on May 24 at 9:50 a.m.
“I think they wrote the ticket, left off information and caught their mistake later on,” Brienza said.
Bolofsky — who is poised to sue the city over the changed tickets — estimated the city has made $21 million off drivers by avoiding the dismissal of 220,000 flawed parking tickets.
