The elderly couple whose car was targeted for towing by the city has discovered that a neighbor was not the one who report the vehicle abandoned ? as originally thought ? a city employee did.
A controversial law deems vehicles parked in the same space on a city street for more than 48 hours to be abandoned.
The law is complaint-driving; generally, cars reported by citizens are towed. Critics of the law said it turns neighbor against neighbor, but in the case of the Henry and Anita Cheswick, it was city employee versus resident.
“I don?t know, maybe the person didn?t have enough work,” Anita Cheswick said.
Cheswick told The Examiner that an employee from the Department of Transportation told her Friday that it was not a neighbor who reported their car, but a yet-to-be-identified city employee.
Anita Cheswick said the revelation shocked her.
“I was told by a person from the city it was none of my neighbors. Can you imagine? … It?s really puzzling,” she said.
The Cheswicks, both 83-year-old residents of their Brooklyn neighborhood for more than 50 years, said their car was deemed abandoned by the city and scheduled for towing last week.
Forced to move the car from the same space in front of their house where they been parking for decades, the disabled elderly couple agree the law was misapplied in their case. Now they?re puzzled as to why city employees are targeting their vehicle.
“Why would a city employee have any interest in calling at all?” Anita Cheswick said.
DOT spokeswoman Adrienne Barnes said city employees are expected to report problems they encounter throughout the city, including abandoned cars.
“When city employees are out in the field, they investigate or report things that need to be corrected,” Barnes said. “We need those eyes and ears. The law is not totally complaint-driven.”
City Councilman Keiffer Jackson Mitchell, D-11th District, who introduced a bill that would change the law, said the Cheswick case is an example of why the law needs to be amended.
“It just highlights the need for the city to examine the law, to see what we can do make this law reasonable,” Mitchell said.
