It is odd and I think it speaks to a culture problem in the NYPD and many urban police departments. They're often part of the "car culture" of cities. They want

It is odd and I think it speaks to a culture problem in the NYPD and many urban police departments. They're often part of the "car culture" of cities. They want to drive and park easily. Their friends want to drive and park easily. That makes them want to turn a blind eye toward these types of infractions. Every police officer and every department is going to decide that there are some crimes and infractions that they care about, assign people to enforce, and promote people for working on. Pedestrian and bike safety often isn't one of them - especially when the majority of the officers don't see that as a problem to begin with and see enforcement against cars as a bad thing for them and their family/friends. In any organization, the top only has so much power. If you work in software, the CEO might say "we want to do X," but if engineering managers and individual engineers aren't enthusiastic about X, it's going to be a struggle. Sure, they'll maybe create some team and assign engineers they don't consider that great to the team (since they don't care to see X done). Those engineers might be told things like "you should really spend 20-50% of your time doing things that will impact the whole org rather than focusing on X" or maybe those engineers see that their managers aren't really interested in X and try to transfer off the team or find ways of doing something else while still on the team that their managers do care about. Yes, the CEO can fire people, but it's also easy to make it seem like progress is happening without progress really happening. Ok, the mayor or city council wants to see progress on ticketing these evil cars. Well, the police often have the option of going into low-income or minority neighborhoods and ticketing there, probably for infractions that aren't actually what the mayor or council see as the problem. But they still report that ticketing bad cars is up 20% and give just enough detail and just enough obfuscation that the mayor/council doesn't really know what's going on. Maybe the city wants to create a new organization outside the NYPD to take on this task. Well, now you're fighting the NYPD (and likely the unions) which probably has more power than you do. I agree: just enforce the laws. However, that's easier said than done when the people tasked with enforcing the laws might be a big part of the problem.