Police busted more than 60 commercial vehicles for parking illegally on the night of Thursday, Dec. 8 around Maspeth and Elmhurst. Cops blanketed target areas with summonses and towed five heavy-duty trucks including an 18-wheeler.
Residents who complained are praising the work of Captain John Travaglia, who led the operation, and the 104th precinct for taking a whack at a persistent problem around the neighborhoods.
“They’re fabulous,” said Roe Daraio, who heads the civic organization Communities of Maspeth and Elmhurst Together (COMET) and brought forward multiple areas where residents worried about their streets being crowded by parked trucks, trailers and vans overnight.
“Everybody is using it as a commercial parking lot,” she said. “People in the community spent a lot of money on their houses, and then you have these big industrial trailers. It looks terrible, and it’s taking away people’s parking.”
Parking commercial vehicles or trucks on residential streets between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. is illegal, but it’s become a persistent annoyance around Maspeth and Elmhurst because of stubborn truck owners and a lack of means of enforcement.
Captain Michael Cody, the commanding officer of the 104th precinct told COMET members that often businesses will simply take any summons issued as a cost of doing business because it can be cheaper than actually finding commercial parking.
Towing becomes the only real way to make an impact, forcing an owner to take the time and pay the money to get a vehicle out of impound.
“When you tow the truck, that’s how you send a message to the owner of the truck,” Cody said.
The problem is actually moving something as large as an 18-wheeler. Cody said the city has a very limited number of tow trucks available to haul such large commercial vehicles.
For an operation like this, Travaglia—a former highway patrol officer familiar with parking issues like this—had to coordinate with other city agencies to borrow the heavy-duty tows needed.
Even with everything lined up, it’s time consuming and only five trucks were towed in one night.
However, operations like this will be ongoing Cody said. He, Travaglia and other executive officers in the 104th have made a push to address complaints from neighbors about this and other quality-of-life issues.
“Any large vehicle left unattended is an opportunity for a vandal or a thief,” Cody said. “It’s really not fair for the community if the car’s parked there for an inordinate amount of time.”
On that note, Cody said summonses for illegally parked commercial vehicles has increased more than 75 percent over the last few months, and the real muscle—tows—will continue to be in the precinct’s arsenal.
“We’re going to try to do it on a regular basis,”
By Jeremiah Dobruck
