Supposedly diplomats, especially in New York City, are immune from parking tickets. That is, they don’t have to pay them, and therefore park as if the rules dont apply to the diplos (which perhaps they dont).
Is this true, or just a myth? If I join the Foreign Service and get stationed in Capitol City, Foreign Country, I can just double park and jaywalk to my heart’s content, burning all my tickest while laughing?
Does this columnanswer your question?
Yes. http://www.usc.edu/schools/business/FBE/seminars/papers/AE_4-28-06_FISMAN-parking.pdf
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E1D8113CF931A25757C0A961958260
Cecil doesn’t really understand, or at least, does not wholly explain Diplomatic Immunity and what it means here.
DI is granted by the host country, and cannot generally be revoked retroactively. However, in extremem cases, a diplomatic can be prosecuted, usually by embarassing his (or maybe her) home country enough that they agree to let a prosecution happen and just ignore it. And in fact, anyone could ignore their own previously-issued DI; it’s jsut that the cure would be worse than the disease.
In the case of auto citations, the problem is that the diplomats are under no obligation to get arund to paying, and many don’t. Frequently, these are not professionals, but connected third-world types with more money than sense, blowing their time on parties in New York. Whether the car is personal property or embassy property may also affect whether or not they get paid back, and on how much the home country cares about Mr. Idiot Diplomat.
There’s the related ongoing argument in London about whether diplomats are subject to the congestion charge, whereby cars entering the centre of the city have to pay.
The US Embassy has been the most prominant of the refusniks. In their case, they’ve been careful to emphasise that they do pay their parking fines as a matter of course. Their argument in the case of the congestion charge is that it’s a tax, rather than a fine, and hence they are exempt from it by international agreement.
It’s not been a stand that particularly enamoured the US diplomatic service to the British press. But, equally, the then-Mayor Ken Livingstone saw an easy populist issue to beat the Bush government up over with.
Curious. Have any US diplomats attempted to get free Tube tickets, too?
Here’s a case where the sending country refused to waive diplomatic immunity for a misbehaving diplomat, but conducted an investigation in the host country (with the permission of the host country, of course).
It’s Bricker, not Cecil.
DI is granted by the host country, and cannot generally be revoked retroactively. However, in extremem cases, a diplomatic can be prosecuted, usually by embarassing his (or maybe her) home country enough that they agree to let a prosecution happen and just ignore it. And in fact, anyone could ignore their own previously-issued DI; it’s jsut that the cure would be worse than the disease.
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The immunity belongs to the home country, which may waive it for past offenses. **Bricker **covered that here:
What’s the story on diplomatic immunity? - The Straight Dope
And see Article 32 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations:
You can read about more diplomatic hijinks in
and in some threads: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=341956&highlight=diplomatic
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=400908&highlight=diplomatic
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=350495&highlight=diplomatic