Police often get to play by their own rules, and someone just called out the hypocrisy of parking cops ignoring fellow police vehicles while generously doling out expensive tickets for everyone else.

A clip shared by author and professor Shawn Micallef shows parking enforcement officers writing up tickets for parked cars, all while an OPP cruiser sits unticketed on the opposite side of the street.

And here's the real kicker: the cruiser has been illegally parking in that spot for over a year.

It's part of a series of tweets going back to 2021, showing an OPP cruiser just chilling in front of a provincial office building at 25 Grosvenor Street in the Yonge and College area.

No Standing.

Toronto Parking cops ticket cars on the other side of the street. Maybe they can’t see this side?!

Some kind of optical eclipse! A Sargasso Sea of tickets? pic.twitter.com/n5uEUTvFBj

— Maltese Petard 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (@shawnmicallef) September 29, 2022

Day in, day out, the familiar black and white car — its plates match in all the photos and videos — sits parked in the same location, seemingly immune to all traffic laws.

Micallef tells blogTO that the cruiser has "been [there] at least a year, but I started taking photos in November," remarking that while the OPP car remains unticketed, there are often "tickets on cars across the street."

No Standing.

A new twist on an old classic. pic.twitter.com/j092RfR1cA

— Maltese Petard 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (@shawnmicallef) October 3, 2022

It's become such a mainstay on this stretch of Grosvenor that it was even featured in the clever AusterityTO art project, which playfully poked fun at John Tory's mayoralty of austerity with plaques commemorating things like overflowing garbage cans and other broken infrastructure as intentional works of art.

Just added a 14th plaque to the website for the #AusterityTO project. When we visited a few times earlier, the car wasn't there. Performance art can be fickle like that.

Say hello to "Notwithstanding"

Artistic write-up here:https://t.co/lmTzwQnyUB pic.twitter.com/TC5JMuRp6z

— James McLeod (@jamespmcleod) October 2, 2022

Police have faced similar callouts over perceptions of a double standard in recent weeks for violating the very cycling no-nos that they so vigorously enforce in public places like High Park.

But Toronto Police Constable Sean Shapiro tells blogTO that "emergency services personnel, while in the performance of their duties, are exempt from parking by-laws."

He explains that he "can appreciate how a member of the public could see a double standard here; however, when responding to calls for service, officers must respond as quickly as possible in the interests of public safety."

Shapiro cites Chapter 950 of the Toronto Municipal Code regarding Commercial, Passenger, Bus and Delivery Vehicles Loading and Parking Zones, and explains that "Even when calls appear to be of a lower priority, officers' vehicles must remain reasonably accessible as they may be dispatched to an emergency call at any moment."

But Micallef argues that "there's no emergency" here. If anything, the car's presence on this block is counterproductive as he claims that the OPP cruiser "actually blocked a fire truck one day."

And after at least a year of the cruiser remaining more or less undisturbed in this position, the only logical explanation here is that two invisible cops are on the most hardcore stakeout in the history of law enforcement.

Or contending with the longest Tim Hortons line in history.