Posts Tagged 'hypocrisy'

Queens Councilman Busts Traffic Cop

Published June 16, 2010 Photographers' Rights 2 Comments
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Photo: New York Daily News

UPDATE: CBS-TV reports that Officer Chu is a “bona fide legend in certain parts of Queens, and not in a good way” for repeatedly abusing his position. See video of the encounter here.

A Queens Councilman decided to practice a little vigilantism and got a $150 parking ticket for his efforts. As the Daily News reports, Dan Halloran (R-Queens) was alarmed when he saw traffic cop Daniel Chu driving through stop signs — with lights on — while talking on his cell phone. So Halloran followed the car as it ran more stop signs and eventually illegally parked in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts.

Like a good citizen journalist, Halloran snapped photos of the officer’s car, and that’s when Chu returned from DD and was none too happy. Even Halloran identifying himself as a city councilman did nothing to tame Chu’s hubris.

“He said, ‘Oh yeah? You want to take pictures of me? I’m going to give you a ticket,'” Halloran recalled.

Chu then wrote Halloran a $165 ticket for blocking the crosswalk. Halloran is contesting the ticket and asking the NYPD to look into all of Officer Chu’s previously written tickets.

Jimmy Justice would be proud.

Article from New York Daily News (TOTH to Gar Travis)

The Dirty Truth About Street Cleaning in LA

Published November 2, 2009 Photographers' Rights 3 Comments
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In a piece reminiscent of classic “60 Minutes,” USC journalism student Matt Schrader exposes the dirty side of parking enforcement and street cleaning in downtown Los Angeles. Schrader found that while parking enforcement is out in droves ticketing cars, and mostly on street cleaning days (making the city $15,000 an hour!), the streets they’re patrolling aren’t even being cleaned. The best line of the piece is from a guy who got ticketed on one of those streets: “They have the manpower to ticket you, but they don’t have the manpower to actually do the job.”

This is an issue near and dear to our heart, and Schrader told us he was inspired in part by our earlier video where we caught our local parking enforcement agent parking in the loading zone while getting lunch. While LA slides further into bankruptcy and mismanagement, somehow, some way, parking enforcement manages to probably be the city’s most efficient department.  

And though LA’s government is indeed so broken that nothing will likely ever be done, it’s nice to know someone is at least trying to keep them accountable. Long live journalism.

Loading or Carb-Loading?

Published March 29, 2009 Photographers' Rights 85 Comments
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With this post, we diverge from our central theme of photography and photographers’ rights to just peoples’ rights — that  is to say, our rights as people to have our tax dollars well-spent and our city employees follow the very laws they enforce.

Case in point: this video, taken this past week in East Hollywood, where our dogged local parking enforcement officer uses the loading zone as a parking spot for her lunch break. This is the same parking officer who tirelessly drives up and down our neighborhood blocks all day long, looking for cars on the wrong side of the street on street cleaning days and in red zones and with expired meters.

Somewhere we missed it in the Los Angeles city code where parking enforcement officers don’t need to obey the law. Wow, what a job perk! If someone has a copy of that, please send it our way.

*Shot with the Vievu wearable recording device.

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