here's something about parking I've never heard of before... cops parking on sidewalks in New York... illegally, for decades, and the fake placards parking... occupying roughly 65 percent of all the legal or potentially legal parking spaces

notice the double parking on the left, the parking ON the sidewalks on the right. Well, that's in front of that grade school... and kids, they need to use a sidewalk, and not the middle of the road. 

Who is parking there? The police, they also are on the left side of the street, but, down, past the school 

and the only place they park on the sidewalk, in the entire neighborhood (satellite view on Google) is in front of the school

and this Wrangler, parks exactly blocking the wheelchair access. 

Yes, really all those illegally parked cars are NYPD. 

But, you want to see proof, of course. I gotcha

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ak54k/how-one-brooklyn-neighborhood-got-cops-to-stop-parking-on-a-school-sidewalk-for-the-first-time-in-40-years

Those placards and fakes allow the owner to park for free (legally or illegally) in one of the world's most-congested places.

every single car was checked that parked in the roughly 30-square-block zone bounded by Canal, Lafayette and Chambers streets and West Broadway and Varick Street bearing a placard or other quasi-official emblem (mostly fake placards or agency vests, hats, safety helmets, fake badges, patches, business cards or hand-written notes).

This map was made interactive at https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/08/22/the-ultimate-placard-census-downtown-is-choked-with-and-endangered-by-city-state-federal-workers-cars  Click on any blue car (at the link) symbol to see the placard itself

of the 727 placard- or fake-placard-bearing cars in the zone, occupying roughly 65 percent of all the legal or potentially legal parking spaces, which does not count the scores of placarded cars occupying illegal parking spaces that are supposed to be set aside for other uses (such as meters or truck loading and unloading).

The placards in this mostly federal office zone break down as such 

Federal law enforcement: 183 (or 25 percent)
NYPD: 128 (or 18 percent)
NYS Court placards: 70 (or 9.6 percent)
Department of Correction or Probation: 51 (or 7 percent)
Other city agencies: 59 (or 8 percent)
FDNY: 37 (or 5 percent)
and 57 (or 8 percent)  completely ridiculous things on the dash such as notes ("armed officer," "please don't ticket me" or "call me"), fake badges, helmets, vests, official looking placards from other jurisdictions, doorman notes, repair worker notes, fake parking tickets, notes from "friends" of cops, hotel loading zones)

 

Nearly 10 percent of the placards (65 in all) were expired. About 2 percent of the cars with placards (14 cars) had covered or defaced plates and about 3 percent had a missing front New York State or New Jersey plate. (Both states require drivers to have plates on both sides of the car.) Of those 727 cars, we found: 9,064 parking and moving violation tickets — or an average of 12.5 tickets per car. 2,864 speed-camera tickets — or an average of four per car.* 485 red-light tickets — or about one ticket for every two cars.*

No one is monitoring whether placard recipients are abusing their privileges. In calendar year 2019, the NYPD received 4,696 requests for federal placards ... and granted 4,696 federal placards, or 100 percent.

The next year, the NYPD received 4,896 requests ... and granted 100 percent of them.

And in 2021, the NYPD received 4,896 federal placard requests ... and (you guessed it) granted every single one of them.

The same pattern holds for MTA placards and District Attorney placards. Hundreds of applications submitted, every single one of them rubber-stamped for approval. One hundred percent.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/08/22/the-ultimate-placard-census-downtown-is-choked-with-and-endangered-by-city-state-federal-workers-cars