JAMESTOWN, N.Y. (WIVB) — For months, a disabled U.S. Navy veteran in Jamestown found himself trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare, receiving parking violations from New York City for a vehicle he has never owned and a location he has never visited.
The violations kept coming.
According to Chautauqua County Clerk Greg Carlson, the veteran was ultimately hit with 27 parking tickets totaling nearly $1,800, all connected to a bus operating in New York City. The veteran, who requested privacy, turned to local officials for help after the stream of tickets became increasingly frequent and distressing.
“It has been absolutely relentless since March,” Carlson said while helping the veteran navigate the confusing situation.
The violations, issued by New York City’s Department of Finance and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, show a bus bearing license plate AZ7903 parked near an intersection in Brooklyn.
The problem?
Carlson says the veteran has never traveled to Brooklyn and has never possessed a license plate remotely similar to the one appearing on the tickets.
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A growing problem
According to Carlson, the issue first surfaced several years ago but appeared only sporadically. Over the last six months, however, the situation escalated dramatically.
The veteran began receiving violation after violation tied to what appeared to be the same bus repeatedly parking in the same Brooklyn location.
Carlson says evidence suggests the vehicle may have been repeatedly cited by an automated plate-reader system.
“It seems that the bus parks in one particular place where there is a plate-reader camera that issues the tickets,” Carlson explained. “In the past it was very intermittent, then over the course of the last six months it seemed like the bus was parked there a lot more.”
As the citations accumulated, so did the veteran’s anxiety.
“He’s not very tech-savvy. He’s an older constituent and it’s very distressing to him,” Carlson said.
Questions remain unanswered
A close review of the violations raises even more questions.
The tickets identify a bus with license plate AZ7903. Documents reviewed by WIVB News 4 indicate the plate is associated with the New York State Unified Court System, creating additional confusion about how the violations continued to be linked to the Jamestown veteran.
Carlson says one of the most frustrating aspects of the ordeal has been the lack of answers about what specifically caused the mistake.
“It is very strange,” he said. “The one thing that I would really like to hear from New York City Department of Finance is what is causing these errors?”
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Despite repeated efforts to understand the source of the problem, Carlson says a clear explanation has never been provided.
“Trying to understand how the mistake happened never gets answered,” he said.
He believes the issue may stem from a technology failure somewhere within the systems responsible for identifying vehicles and assigning violations.
“There is a problem somewhere in the technology where these systems are not talking to each other,” Carlson said.
State complaint filed
Seeking accountability and answers, Carlson filed a complaint with the New York State Attorney General’s Office.
The goal, he says, is not only to help the veteran but also to determine whether a larger systemic issue exists that could affect others.
If the problem originated from a license plate reader, registration database, or communication breakdown between agencies, Carlson wants to ensure it is identified and corrected.
WIVB News 4 asked if there has been any explanation for how this happened. For now, that question remains unanswered, according to Carlson.
MTA says violations have been dismissed
After being contacted by WIVB News 4, the MTA says it worked with New York City’s Department of Transportation to resolve the issue.
An MTA spokesperson told News 4 that all of the violations associated with this case have been dismissed and that the Jamestown veteran should not receive any additional erroneous tickets in the future.
That resolution brings relief to a veteran who spent months trying to prove he was not responsible for violations occurring hundreds of miles away.
Still, a significant mystery remains.
While the tickets have been canceled, neither the veteran nor county officials have received a definitive explanation for how a disabled Navy veteran in Western New York ended up repeatedly receiving parking violations connected to a bus in Brooklyn.
Until that question is answered, Carlson says concerns remain about whether the same type of error could happen to someone else.
“Trying to understand how the mistake happened never gets answered,” Carlson said.
For this Jamestown veteran, the tickets may finally be gone, but the search for answers continues.
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Jeff Preval is an award-winning anchor and reporter who joined the News 4 team in December 2021. See more of his work here.
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