Bad behavior surrounding placard use in New York City has come into focus again as some drivers apparently have begun presenting themselves as chaplains in order to circumvent parking rules, according to a blog investigation.

Gersh Kuntzman, editor-in-chief of Streetsblog, brought the latest form of placard abuse to light recently when he himself was able to become a chaplain and obtain one of the phony parking permits.

“Just to be clear, so everyone knows, I'm not a man of faith, really of any kind, frankly—other than the Mets, clearly. But I have no advanced training. I don't have a master's or a PhD. Yet, I'm now America's favorite fake chaplain,” Kuntzman said during an interview on “Mornings On 1” Wednesday.

Kuntzman acquired the bogus permit by paying a $750 fee to the New York State Chaplain Group. After submitting an application, he attended an hour of training, which resulted in the issuance of an official-looking parking placard, a metal badge and an ID card.

Streetsblog reached out to the NYPD to inquire about the legitimacy of the placards. The department responded saying it does not work the group nor recognize the placards.

“There's actually a lot of fine print on the back that clearly says it's not a legitimate city-issued placard; it's issued by the New York State Chaplain Group, in this case,” Kuntzman said.

Streetsblog also spoke with Peter Gudaitis, director and CEO of New York Disaster Interfaith Services and chair of Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters, a network of faith-based nonprofits that collaborate with state governments after national disasters. He told Kuntzman that the New York State Chaplain Group is not a recognized organization.

However, Kuntzman noted that an online search for chaplain placards returned many results.

“There are other groups that do this, and the reason they do this is because they can. There's no government body that ordains these chaplains. They're just making placards for people who want to park or go into hospitals and do chaplain work as a volunteer,” he said.

Despite the placard's illegitimacy, Kuntzman said that its presentation might mislead law enforcement.

“If you look at it really closely, there are details on this that a police officer, a hard-working cop on the street, would see and think, ‘Well, it says it's official chaplain duty. It's got a little holographic thing here. Maybe it's real,’” he said.

In 2020, the City Council passed laws to enforce and document personnel who abuse city-issued parking placards. While Mayor Bill de Blasio aimed to phase out the use of paper cards in favor of QR codes, that effort never came to fruition.

Kuntzman said there appears to be little interest from the NYPD to stop the illegal activity.

“[The NYPD] likes to crack down when people are parking illegally. They definitely crack down on people. If I were to park in an NYPD zone with [the chaplain placard], I would probably get busted for that, and I should,” he said.