Traffic Cops Really Need Something Better To Do

A priest gets a ticket for double parking while trying to administer last rites:

A Brooklyn priest got slapped with a $115 parking ticket after he rushed into a hospital to administer last rites to a dying woman, the Daily News has learned.

But even after the Rev. Cletus Forson pleaded his case to a traffic judge, the city refused to throw the summons out.

“If the sanctity of the law won’t bend for the needs of a dying person, I feel really sad,” Forson said yesterday.

“It disturbs me as a priest and as a human being,” added the priest, who has served at St. Andrew the Apostle Church on Ridge Blvd. in Bay Ridge for nearly three years.

Forson got hit with the ticket July 26 about 9:30 p.m. for parking in a No Standing Anytime zone in front of Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park.

The 42-year-old Catholic priest, who is originally from Ghana, said he knew the spot was technically illegal but felt he couldn’t risk wasting time continuing to look for a better spot.

He had just received a call from a panicked parishioner desperate to find a priest to administer last rites to her elderly mother. Forson, who was sick in bed with the flu at the time, said he even checked in with a nurse before leaving and was told there was no time to spare.

“I couldn’t get any parking,” said Forson. “It is my obligation to get there and administer to the needs of the sick.”

Forson placed his official clergy parking permit on the dashboard — which reads “Clergy on Call” — and said he was inside for less than 20 minutes.

“It’s not about the money,” said Forson. “It creates the feeling that if somebody is sick, nobody should go. I don’t think that’s right.”

Forson appealed the ticket, but Administrative Law Judge Michael Ciaravino refused to back down.

“Respondent’s claim that vehicle was parked while he, as a pastor, was attending to a patient at a hospital is not a valid defense to the violation,” wrote Ciaravino in the July 28 decision. “Guilty.”

The only thing better would have been if an ambulance pulled up and got a ticket for being double parked.