As the article explained, tickets had been voided when cases were disputed as widely happens in just about every city.
Honestly, if I were a public official reading the comments here, I'd be inclined to just go "Why do I even bother? I explained how, even though the people who hand out most of the parking tickets were educated about the change, many police officers weren't. We'll fix it now."
Sure, rerun the analysis a year or two down the road. If things don't change, that's a story. But this strikes me as a nice use of open data and a reasonable response from the NYPD. You can argue that they should do pro-active refunds but a lot of addresses will have changed and it would be otherwise difficult and expensive. I'm honestly not convinced that's a reasonable expectation.
> You can argue that they should do pro-active refunds but a lot of addresses will have changed and it would be otherwise difficult and expensive. I'm honestly not convinced that's a reasonable expectation.
If I owe my state or county taxes, or otherwise owe money, they will go through all sorts of hoops and efforts to track me down. Why is it reasonable to not expect that same level of effort when they owe me money?
> I'm honestly not convinced that's a reasonable expectation.
It seems reasonable to me - not being allowed to keep money that isn't yours and that you shouldn't have taken (even by mistake), consider the incentives - writing a huge number of false tickets and then returning the money only to those that are willing to go through the trouble of contesting the ticket.
Eh. Cities issue parking violations all the time when they shouldn't (partially because the rules can be confusing). And, at the same time, many, many people get off with parking violations because they weren't caught. It's hard for me to get excited about a specific group of non-violations because they happened to occur in high incidence spots as uncovered by an examination of public data.
I'm not opposed to the city making a modest effort to refund money to this subset of individuals. Though if it does so I expect it will be purely because they see it as a good PR play.
Yup, so maybe some harm reduction (returning money) and negative reinforcement (hassle of returning) can help incentivize an improvement in the quality of parking enforcement service. Individual employees would likely have the same level of interest that you've expressed, but department heads would have a lot more incentive to act (especially if there is any departmental rivalry).
> ...many people get off with parking violations...
Is your point that these people would have deserved a ticket in the past or future - so whatever, or are you talking about some sort of municipal level karma balance where individuals are irrelevant?
I think the point is that sometimes fighting tooth & nail out of principle for an issue of minor relevance may not be worth it if it damages the goodwill of those making a big and relevant change for good.
Honestly, if I were a public official reading the comments here, I'd be inclined to just go "Why do I even bother? I explained how, even though the people who hand out most of the parking tickets were educated about the change, many police officers weren't. We'll fix it now."
Sure, rerun the analysis a year or two down the road. If things don't change, that's a story. But this strikes me as a nice use of open data and a reasonable response from the NYPD. You can argue that they should do pro-active refunds but a lot of addresses will have changed and it would be otherwise difficult and expensive. I'm honestly not convinced that's a reasonable expectation.