Paul Bass Photo
Michael Granucci back on the beat ticketing a Land Rover.
Meter men and women returned to the streets Thursday — after a three-day job boycott in the face of alleged retaliatory threats from cops angered over getting parking tickets.
The threats may or may not have occurred. But they spooked the city’s fleet of parking enforcers enough that they refused to issue any tickets this week.
Their boss, city Director of Transportation, Traffic & Parking (TT&P) Doug Hausladen, said his department found other work for the employees to do for three days while officials ironed out the dispute.
“They were at work,” Hausladen said Thursday. “We found internal tasks for them to work on, including continuing education.”
The parking enforcers agreed to hit the streets again Thursday after Hausladen distributed a memo clarifying where the city stands—or at this point doesn’t necessarily stand—vis-a-vis ticketing illegally parked police cars.
The episode began because of two related matters Hausladen, who began his job last month, sought to address involving the police department and parking.
One involves the lack of street spaces for cop cruisers in and around police headquarters at 1 Union Ave. The police department has for years been working on finding more spaces. Right now cops and other department employees park all day at some of the metered public spaces in front of the building—and they haven’t received tickets. So do some Board of Education employees. Sometimes cars are parking two or three abreast, blocking traffic. Cops, meanwhile, sometimes find their designated spots on nearby streets taken by Metro-North commuters. Hausladen recently visited Assistant Police Chief Denise Blanchard to discuss where other spaces might be found, or, he said, whether he should just have some of the meters removed from Union Avenue so cops can legally park all day.
Hausladen said he wants to find ways “to squeeze in more spaces for police officers.”
The second matter involves tickets of illegally parked police cars. This question has cropped up at times over the years, sparking tensions between cops (and their union) and traffic officials. When police officers get tickets, they can submit them to a high-ranking cops—these days Lt. Julie Johnson—who then can bring them over to TT&P to be forgiven. One source of tension has concerned the private cars of officers working extra-duty jobs like directing traffic around utility jobs. Back in 2010, for instance, the then-president of the police union clashed with Hausladen’s predecessor over tickets given in those cases. Here’s what the then-president wrote in a memo to officers: “While the Union has made repeated attempts to resolve this issue in a respectful manner it has been rebuffed ... The Union has learned that the traffic assistants have been ordered to ticket police officers’ vehicles or they would be written up for disciplinary action. This is the final straw. ... [If]f any traffic assistant attempts to ticket an officer’s personal car while on extra duty that individual is in violation of the Motor Vehicle Statute and could also be committing the crime of Interfering with a Police Officer. ... It is the opinion of the Executive Board that very little discretion should be exercised by Police Officers, especially in the downtown areas (delivery trucks, armored cars etc.) as it related to parking violations and motor vehicle violations.”
Rumors & “Threats”
After Hausladen met with police officials recently to discuss both matters, word spread through the department that he had ordered his enforcers to ticket police department employees’ vehicles outside 1 Union Ave. and to ticket the illegally parked cars of officers working extra-duty jobs. (Hausladen denied ever issuing such orders.)
Ron Hobson (pictured) started hearing from scared parking enforcers. He represents them as president of president of AFSCME Council 4 Local 884.
“They were scared by the threats,” Hobson said. Cops had allegedly told the meter men and women “they were going to ‘make their life miserable.’”
The parking enforcers also brought their fears to their boss, Hausladen, and refused to go back out in the street until the matter could be resolved.
Hobson, meanwhile, brought the complaint to Assistant Police Chief Luiz Casanova. Casanova said he told Hobson to get him specific names of officers making alleged threats.
“We will not tolerate that behavior,” Casanova said Thursday.
He also said he doubts actual threats were made. Hobson said that when he returned to the parking enforcers, they declined to offer any specific names of officers making threats. (City officials have barred parking enforcers from speaking to the press.)
Police Union Local 530 President Louis Cavaliere Jr. denied any of his members threatened any meter men or women.
“Nobody’s ever threatened. That’s illegal! We’re professionals. We don’t work that way,” Cavaliere said Thursday. “We have a problem. We’re trying to come up with a solution.
“Doug is new. He wants to come in strong and do his job and feel he’s wanted and he’s important. Him reaching out to us and us having an open dialogue has helped drastically. He’s been calling me, and I’ve been calling him. We’re meeting tomorrow. I think this is all going to be settled in a couple of days.”
Cavaliere and Hausladen have a meeting scheduled for Friday morning to discuss parking solutions. One idea on the table: Removing some of the meters in front of 1 Union Ave. so cops can park there all day. Hobson called the idea a “waste of taxpayer money” since the city installed those meters only a few years ago.
Also under discussion: the idea of creating more parking spaces on unused land two blocks behind the police station near the Church Street South housing projects. Cavaliere has some hesitation about officers parking their personal cars there: The department has already created new spaces near there, and vandals have slashed tires and otherwise damaged officers’ cars. Cops recently arrested a man responsible for some of the vandalism. “A lot of guys don’t want to park in the back because their cars are getting damaged,” Cavaliere said. “People see an officer get out of a personal car, that’s a target. That’s a personal mark.”
2 Memos
Thomas MacMillan Photo
In the meantime, Hausladen (pictured) wrote two memos Thursday that ended the standoff with his workers for now.
The first was addressed to Police Chief Esserman and distributed to TT&P staffers.
“I wanted to take a moment and clarify any misconceptions and rumors that may be floating around,” the memo began. “There has been no change to policies with respect to parking around 1 Union Avenue and no directives to parking enforcement officers to anything differently than has been happening over the past few years.” He called the meeting with Chief Blanchard last Friday “the first of many” to come up with long-term parking solutions. They discussed a 2012 consultant’s report on addressing parking problems around the station, he wrote.
He then wrote that until meeting with Casanova last week, he had “never heard” before of a practice of waiving parking tickets for community policing purposes. ... I would like to learn more about it. After further discussions with both Chief Blanchard and the Mayor’s office, there will be no change to this policy and practice, nor was there ever any plan to do so. I apologize if my way of understanding our systems through asking questions has caused any concern.”
He then addressed extra-duty work. He wrote that his department considers extra-duty jobs “within the performance” of cops’ duties. He then said he’d “like to work together with the Police Department to further improve this system.”
To date, Hausladen said Thursday, he has approved all of Lt. Johnson’s requests to waive officers’ tickets. He said he does not recall being asked to waive any tickets involving cops parking in handicapped spots while on extra duty.
In a separate memo Thursday to all city department heads, Hausladen addressed the question of when city employees might receive tickets while on city time.
“City employees and inspectors on official city business (including extra-duty work for police officers) are able to park at any legal meter without the requirement of payment or to park in a space longer than the meter time limit,” he wrote.
But, he clarified, that doesn’t mean employees may park in illegal spots. “[Y]ou cannot block fire hydrants or crosswalks, park in bus stops, park in no parking zones, park on sidewalks or driveway aprons, park in pick-up/delivery only zones parking in disabled parking slots (unless the employee is authorized to do so by displaying a disabled placard issued by the state)” or park in temporary no-parking spots reserved for street sweeping or special events.
Union President Cavaliere said he always tells his officers to avoid parking in handicapped spots or in front of hydrants or crosswalks .
I think that it's ridiculous to ticket NHPD cruisers; there is no place to park over there, and anyone that's not a cop who wants to visit the station has a good long walk ahead of them. As for the Church Street Housing Project, turning it into a parking garage for NHPD would put a halt to the ridiculous level of violence that flows out of that place.