New York Sanitation Workers Caught On Camera Giving Phony Tickets: Lawmakers

New York's finest may be well versed in the art of ticket-fixing and planting crack on the innocent, but sanitation workers?

Legislators are coming out against the city's sanitation department after a video surfaced allegedly revealing sanitation authorities issuing fraudulent tickets for violations people never committed.

Homeowner Monty Katz said he fell victim to such iffy sanitation work and told CBS, "I was appalled. If it was done to me, it was done to hundreds and hundreds of people out there who do not have video cameras and have to repay it because they don’t have any proof whatsoever."

Assemblyman Dov Hikind said that a violation could cost New Yorkers at least $100 per ticket and that such phony allegations "are nothing more than a money-maker for the city.”

During 2010's city-wide blizzard, the sanitation department was under investigation over claims accusing workers deliberately slowed down cleanup efforts in order to rake in overtime payment. A video (see below) was posted onto YouTube of sanitation workers allegedly taking an eleven-hour break at Dunkin Donuts with their snow plows parked outside.

City Councilman Dan Halloran said he had heard from three separate workers that their supervisors had directed them "to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file."

The New York Times reported that supervisors had also been angry with the Bloomberg administration over nearly 100 demotions throughout the department.