By Serena Solomon
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — Complaints about aggressive ticketing by traffic enforcement officers on the Upper West Side have been flooding in lately, Council Member Gale Brewer's office said this week.
At the top of the violation hit list is double parking.
"It just doesn't make human sense," said Jennifer, an actor on the Upper West Side who was ticketed late last year for momentarily double parking while her child walked from the school door to the car at West End Avenue and 103rd Street.
"She wrote on my ticket 'sitter,'" said Jennifer, who did not want to give her last name. "So my crime was a 'sitter.'"
In a letter last week to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Brewer argued that even if drivers were technically breaking the law, the aggressive ticketing practices being reported by her constituents could harm community relations with the police.
"...many of the drivers who have complained were either in the drivers seat or in the act of helping a family member in or out of the vehicle when a ticket was written," Brewer said in the letter.
There are certain places in the neighborhood that are a magnet for traffic tickets, an aid from Brewer's office said. One of those areas is 77th Street, which has bike lanes on either side of the road and is home to the American Museum of Natural History and two schools.
Lazaro Colon, a chauffeur on the Upper West Side, is sure agents have a quota of tickets to meet.
"No matter how, they are going to get you," Colon said of traffic enforcement officials.
Currently, he has three tickets to his name. But these ones were unusually painful, because they came as $115 surprises in the mail.
"I moved when I saw them (agents) coming," he said. Colon claimed his license plate number was written down as he pulled away.
The question of quotas for traffic enforcement agents has been an issue in the city for years. In 2005, John Valles, director of parking enforcement for the Police Department, danced around the word "quota" while speaking before the City Council, according to the New York Times. Instead he admitted that officers "have an expectation" of how many tickets should be given out in a day.
The NYPD did not return call or e-mail for comment on the matter.
Whatever the words the NYPD uses, Colon is sure of one infamous source of motivation.
"I guess the city needs to make money," he said.
