Reporter Challenges NYU Law Prof Over Alleged ‘Parking Shenanigans’
Updated: A reporter for the New York Daily News is keeping close tabs on a Lexus driven by an adjunct law professor at New York University.
According to a Daily News story, Robert Goldstock used a state-issued parking permit to park his car in a no-parking zone for six hours on Tuesday. A reporter confronted Goldstock as he walked to his car after teaching a law school class on corruption. Goldstock, who spoke to the ABA Journal, is incredulous that this is even an issue and asserts he did nothing wrong.
According to the Daily News, however, the parking placard is “a cushy job perk” from Goldstock’s work with the New York Waterfront Commission. The story maintains that, “parking shenanigans” have continued despite a state inspector general’s report two years ago warning that parking placards were being misused.
When a Daily News reporter confronted Goldstock, he said he was on “official police business”—a luncheon sponsored by the Vera Institute of Justice. He refused to elaborate, slamming his door shut and speeding off, the story says.
Goldstock defended his parking choice in a memo to the staff of the Water Commission and in an interview. “What I did was open,” Goldstock tells the ABA Journal. “It was legal, it was within the commission guidelines and within ethical guidelines. Given the same circumstances, I would do precisely the same thing again.”
Goldstock adds details about those circumstances in the Water Commission memo, sent before publication of the Daily News story. “I advised the reporter who accosted me that I was on official business, attending a presentation by Michael Jacobson, the head of the Vera Institute of Justice,” Goldstock writes. “In accordance with my usual practice, I also attended to other commission business while I was there. Indeed, the reporter’s follow-up inquiries to NYU Law School confirmed what I had advised him. However, if history is a guide, the real facts will not dissuade that reporter from writing another negative story.”
Goldstock criticizes other Daily News stories about the Waterfront Commission as one-sided and inaccurate. A story about the stationing of an armed police officer at the reception desk, for example, failed to note that an armed individual had previously tried to enter commission offices, he says.
“We will not be deterred because an unprofessional reporter, not knowing or caring about actual facts, seeks to mock the commission,” Goldstock writes.
Updated at 2:50 p.m. to include comments from Goldstock.
