Needing To Fill A Quota? Just Make Up Fake License Plates!

Perhaps quotas have something to do with it? Nah:

A traffic-enforcement agent was busted yesterday for plastering bogus tickets on cars that had been parked legally, police said.

Nivea Cloud, 30, resigned yesterday in the wake of an NYPD Internal Affairs investigation.

Cloud, who was assigned to Manhattan for three years, allegedly placed phony tickets on cars that were parked in Long Island City, Queens, according to police sources.

She was charged with falsifying records, official misconduct, and filing false parking tickets.

All of the tickets that Cloud issued were voided after the investigation, police said.

Officials would not give a motive, but a source said cops were looking into the possibility that she did it because it was easier than going out to look for illegally parked cars where she was assigned.

Lodged Like A Piece Of Dirt In The Eye Of The Beholder

Grandstanding politican or co-optative businessman? Co-optative businessman or grandstanding politician? They’re both crazy:

The graffiti grudge match between Queens Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. and hip-hop designer/entrepreneur Marc Ecko has a long history.

The two have been clashing over the pros and cons of graffiti art since last August, when Vallone tried — and failed — to squelch a Chelsea street party organized by Ecko that featured graffiti artists tagging mock subway cars.

This week, Ecko won a preliminary court skirmish involving an anti-graffiti law that Vallone championed.

A Manhattan federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against a provision barring people age 18 to 20 from possessing spray paint or broad-tipped markers. The ruling is being appealed.

Ecko instigated and is financing the suit, which names the city, Mayor Bloomberg and Vallone as defendants.

. . .

Vallone said that Ecko — who went from spray-painting T-shirts to becoming a megamerchandiser of video games and hip-hop fashion — is posing as a freedom-of-speech champion to promote his merchandise.

“He’s not defending free speech; he’s trying to sell his games and clothing,” Vallone huffed. “It’s a big scam.”

[Ecko’s lawyer Daniel] Perez countered, “If anybody knows a thing or two about getting headlines, it’s Peter Vallone. He’s the son of a political titan . . . and he’s got bigger things in mind than being in the Council.”

There Oughta Be A Law!

Is New York really becoming more polite by criminalizing boorish behavior? Or are we just indulging our inner cluck-cluck? Experts disagree:

. . . [S]omehow a city whose residents have long been scorned for their churlish behavior is now being praised for adopting rules and laws that govern personal conduct, making New York an unlikely model for legislating courtesy and decorum.

From tighter restrictions on sports fans and car alarms to a new $50 fine on subway riders who rest their feet on a seat, New York’s efforts to curb everyday annoyances and foster more civility among its residents have increasingly been studied and debated far from home.

. . .

“It sounds like your City Council is getting really uptight,” said Aaron Peskin, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who, along with his colleagues, has nevertheless looked to New York’s laws for guidance. “It all seems a little overwrought.”

. . . Peter Post, the director of the Emily Post Institute, which instructs schools, businesses and government organizations on etiquette, said that law or no law, good behavior could not simply be forced on unwilling people. Instead, he suggested that New York invest in a public relations campaign that reflected the sentiments of its residents.

“I think we’ve reached a tipping point with rudeness,” he said. “Instead of people quietly putting up with rude behavior, they’re finally saying, ‘I don’t have to put up with that anymore.'”

All of which seems to suggest that it’s acceptable to be rude to people who are rude. Now that’s the spirit!

Honestly, I’d Care A Little More About Your Civil Liberties If Homeland Security Wasn’t Waving So Much Damn Cash In My Face

Hizzoner says that the 505 surveillance cameras going up around the city are not meant to catch terrorists more than they are there to nab petty criminals. Is that supposed to make anyone feel better?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday that the main purpose of the 505 surveillance cameras soon to pop up in 253 spots around the city is to fight everyday street crime rather than catch terrorists.

“The crime that we worry about day in and day out mostly is street crime,” he told reporters during a news conference. “That’s what we’ve got to bring down.”

Bloomberg said the likelihood of a terrorist attack is hopefully lessened because of the city’s prevention measures, intelligence-gathering and counterterrorism work.

The surveillance cameras, which will be installed in high-traffic, high-crime areas, are key to combating street crime, the mayor said.

“When there is a crime committed, one of the first things the police do is look in the neighborhood and see if there’s a camera in a store that’s been running, that may catch the perpetrator,” Bloomberg added.

Fair enough — I don’t mind them getting a little Big Brother on us if it can help them figure out who busted my windshield — but isn’t the idea of a Homeland Security grant to focus on the whole problem of wackos with bombs? Or maybe I’m naive for assuming that’s what they’d use it for:

At about $18,000 per camera, the total system will cost in excess of $9.1 million, to be funded with federal homeland security grants, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly during a hearing before the City Council Public Safety Committee Tuesday.

Police are now in the process of picking a contractor to install the cameras — closed-circuit televisions that will likely not be monitored in real time but will provide footage for police to scour after a crime happens.

Meant to act as a deterrent as well, the cameras will be highly visible under signs reading: “Area Under NYPD Video Surveillance.”

And not to get all, you know, ACLU about it, but people on Staten Island don’t have even the slightest pretext that these have anything to do with terrorism:

Many [cameras] come courtesy of the borough’s most avid proponent of surveillance cameras, Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn), who has allocated nearly $1.5 million toward them. He funded cameras that now record the bustle in six public schools. A $35,000 surveillance system he funded for the Jewish Community Center in Sea View helped catch two teen-agers who set fire to center property in December 2004.

Oddo reported that the city Housing Authority has given him the go-ahead to install closed-circuit televisions in the Berry Houses and South Beach Houses. He is now working on getting the money through City Council capital funds.

Councilman Michael McMahon (D-North Shore) offered his own list of hot spots yesterday, mostly delis and other retail operations that have become the focal point of drug deals and other crime.

His suggested sites include the Arlington Terrace Apartments, the corner of Brabant Street and Harbor Road in Mariners Harbor, a stretch of Richmond Terrace in Port Richmond where prostitution has been reported and Castleton Avenue at the corner of Port Richmond Avenue in Port Richmond and the corner of Broadway in West Brighton.

Schools, public housing, parks — you get the idea what these cameras are really used for. And with the mayor saying flatly that is what they’re used for, well, there you go.

Yes, That Labor Dispute Thing

If you care what’s happening with the MTA-TWU talks, click here, because I couldn’t be bothered.