Book Shows How to Leave Parking Tickets in the Dust

Leonard Gleich had spent most of his life negotiating Manhattan’s daily annoyances with a native’s stoical resignation. Then he got a parking ticket.

“It wasn’t just any parking ticket,” said Gleich, a 44-year-old construction contractor who lives in SoHo. “I had gotten them before. This ticket ended up being the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the way parking tickets are given out in this city, and the country for that matter.”

Gleich’s frustration motivated him to research and write his recently published 87-page book, “How to Beat Parking Tickets Legally,” which explains how the public can manipulate New York City traffic and parking law to get out of a parking ticket.

The $7.95 book, which Gleich hopes to expand into a national edition once he does the necessary research, blasts the city for what he calls unfair and sloppy ticketing policies.

“One-third of all parking tickets can be beaten,” Gleich said. “The reasons range from ticketing agents writing down the wrong information to police simply ticketing for no reason. Motorists in New York City and the rest of the country just need to be educated on how to fight the bureaucracy.”

Gleich said he is not selling any gimmicks or dusting off loopholes left over from the city’s horse-and-buggy days. He is simply taking existing New York City traffic laws and condensing them into an understandable form.

“The New York City Parking Violations Bureau simply won’t make information available to the public,” Gleich said. “It’s on the books and in some brochures, but it’s all in arcane language. The average person has to go right to the primary sources to see what their rights are, and people would rather just cough up the 25 or 50 bucks.”

Gleich, however, became angry enough about 10 years ago to research these “primary sources.”

A traffic agent ticketed him for not displaying a 3-inch sign bearing the name of his contracting company on his truck. It was his fourth ticket in one week and, at $100, his most expensive.

“I had never been aware of any violation of this type,” Gleich said. “But I didn’t doubt that it was a violation either. So I just requested a list of city violations so I would know about other potential problems, because as a small businessman you can’t afford to be blowing $100 every time you pull in. I went through the entire bureaucracy and no one could provide me with anything.”

Gleich decided to take matters into his own hands. Along with his co-authors, Jane Katz and Joanne Sandler, two friends who had gotten their own share of parking tickets, Gleich researched parking laws and regulations in the city and state.

The team then interviewed hundreds of ticketing agents, police officers, violations bureau officials and administrative law judges, who handle parking ticket appeals.

The result is a book that includes advice on appeals, lists 16 different technical mistakes that the police or violations bureau agents make that automatically invalidate a ticket and reveals the best spot in New York City to take a chance on parking for an extra 10 or 15 minutes.

Gleich is betting that the information in his book is especially attractive to city residents these days, when government bureaucracy is pervasive and government services seem less and less visible.

On one weekday morning, as Gleich peddled his book to a rush-hour crowd from a makeshift stand outside the violations bureau in Brooklyn, people leafing through the book were willing to consider any idea that makes life hard for city government.

“I’ve never questioned a speeding ticket given to me in the city,” said Seth Kaufman of Manhattan. “The mentality is you just chalk it up to expenses of New York, like rent or the subway. Even if you don’t win, it might be fun to give these guys a hard time.”

Gleich’s crusade, however, has come under criticism from the New York City Transportation Department, which maintains that Gleich is simply an adept self-promoter.

Joseph DiPlasco, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, said no one needs Gleich’s book to fight their parking ticket.

“There is plenty of information available on this,” DiPlasco said. “Assuming his information is correct, it’s still going to cost you money. There’s no charge for our stuff, and everyone also has access” to the violation bureau’s help centers.

According to the bureau, one-third of the people who plead not guilty to their parking ticket get it dismissed. Almost 40% more, though found guilty, get at least some of their fine lopped off.

Gleich said one-third of all tickets can be beaten but only 10% are contested.

“There should be no hesitation to plead not guilty or check for errors on the ticket, which completely voids the summons anyway,” Gleich said.

Gleich said that the book was published on Oct. 1 by a publishing company he founded, PS Publishing Group Ltd., and that the first 7,000-copy run is selling briskly. The venture has cost him and his co-authors just about as much as they have made, but Gleich is hoping he can get a major publisher interested in a national edition.

“I think word just has to get around,” Gleich said. “There’s certainly a market for it.”