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A new report claims the city's system of cracking down on counterfeit and improperly used parking placards "remains broken."

Advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, which conducted the report, found 57 percent of placards in parked vehicles in the city's civic centers were used illegally or were fake. And in Lower Manhattan near the courts, just 11 of 244 surveyed in the area were being used properly.

The city claims that 78,000 legal placards exist. But Transportation Alternatives estimates anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000 fraudulent placards are now in use. 

Stu Loeser, a spokesman for the mayor, said the city has cut the number of placards in half and works hard at enforcement: "Working with the Internal Affairs Bureau, the NYPD regularly tows cars using placards inappropriately," he said in and email. "In terms of fake placards, they get ticketed."

And city officials added that since the NYPD established its special Internal Affairs Bureau Placard enforcement program in April 2008, the department has issued 28,000 summonses, towed 6,000 vehicles and arrested 32 individuals for unauthorized use or duplication of official placards.

In 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg directed every city agency to reduce its parking placards by 20 percent. He centralized the issuance of placards to the New York Police Department and Department of Transportation. The city's best guess at the time was that there were 150,000 to 170,000 parking permits in use — and those were just the legal ones.

"Parking placards are a necessary tool for conducting city business, but we have no tolerance for their abuse, which contributes to congestion," said Mayor Bloomberg at the time. "We will give out placards only to those who need to use them to further the public interest."

Transportation Alternatives researchers canvassed five business districts throughout the city in January and found a pattern of abuse, according to the report. Bogus placards included official-looking permits unrecognized by the city, photocopies of real permits, expired permits and personal effects used as permits: transit vests, patrol manuals and even a sheet of paper scrawled with the letters "NYPD." Drivers typically used the bogus permits to double park or leave their vehicles on sidewalks or in bike or bus lanes. 

"Each step in the process—from creation of the permits, to distribution and enforcement—is fatally flawed, creating a system wrought with abuse and lacking effective oversight," the report states.