If there is one thing that can make a driver livid it is when a public parking space is illegally made private. We have neighbors who are still complaining about an illegal sidewalk cut on our block five years ago. So we can only imagine the furor those trying to park on East 20th Street between Second and Third Avenues must feel. See the block, which houses the NYPD's Police Academy, is also home to half a dozen home-made Department of Sanitation signs meant which read "No Standing," and then: "Except Authorized Police Academy Vehicles." Those crazy cadets!
Nobody is owning up to the signs, but the DOT says they are looking into it: "We are working with [the NYPD] and will make any necessary changes or corrections to the signage," a spokeswoman told the News. Which doesn't even mean the signs are coming down.
Anyway! To neighbors the signs, which nobody seems to remember going up in the first place, are just a part of a much larger problem: the block is overrun with cop cars. "We don't get street cleaning anymore because cops' cars are always parked here," moaned one. "They are terrible neighbors."
But at least they are terrible neighbors who are increasingly unlikely to fire their weapons, right? Also, we know people who would love to live on a block overrun with the cops. And the whole thing shouldn't be a problem much longer anyway since the NYPD is building a new academy in College Point that will have a very large parking garage when it opens (in two years or so).
