Parking Scofflaws

Back in 1982, I was working as a Staff Researcher in the Research and Projects Unit of Traffic Coordination Section. Then Commander Bill Rathburn, later to become Deputy Chief Rathburn, was the Department Traffic Coordinator. I got a call to report to Commander Rathburn. When I got to his office he showed me a copy of an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about how SFPD was implementing a program based on a new state law that allowed them to impound vehicles that had received five or more parking tickets that hadn't been properly dealt with (paid). He wanted to know if we had a problem in L.A. with people not paying their parking tickets.

I made an inquiry from the Traffic Court building requesting that they give me list of unpaid parking tickets for the last year. They told me it would take a few days. A few days later, I got a call from my contact at the traffic court building who said that my list was ready. He also suggested that I bring a furniture dolly to move my "list" since it contained over thirty thousand entries. The list was computer-generated. Each line on the printout represented one ticket and there were about fifty lines on each page. The list was contained in two expandable loose leaf notebooks that were each about 7-8 inches thick.

I reported back to Commander Rathburn that we did, indeed, have something to work with and he directed that I begin coming up with a plan to deal with this.

First, the law. There were two applicable new impound sections that had been added to the vehicle code. The first had to do with vehicles registered in California or any other state. If any such vehicle had been issued five or more parking tickets that had not been paid, the police could impound the car and hold it until the tickets were paid. The second said that any vehicle whose registration had expired more than a year earlier could be impounded and held until the registration issues were cleared up.

We came up with a plan and got it approved. We looked through the "list" of parking tickets and found a license number that had been issued 105 tickets, most of which were near a particular intersection in downtown Los Angeles. The plate was a California plate.

So we checked out a black and white car, put on our uniforms (I got another officer from my unit to go with me), and drove to the area in question. It took about five minutes to find the car and it was parked illegally and had been cited. We impounded the car and went back to the office. Approximately three days later, we got a call from the court liaison unit at the traffic court building saying there was a woman there asking about her car. It was our baby.

So we drove to the court building and I talked to this woman. She wanted to know why her car was impounded. I told here it was for not paying for parking tickets. She said "I'm confused..." Which meant she wasn't confused at all, of course. She was trying to shift the blame away from herself. Finally she asked the $2,900.00 question. Then she said, "you have to be kidding." Another happy ending for the forces of justice.

A few days later, we were in the field looking for other violators when a parking officer asked us about a car that he had written a bunch of tickets to. This car was an out of state car and, if I didn't mention it earlier, my long "list" was only California plates. I asked the officer if he could get copies of past tickets, and he said he would. I gave him my card and just as I did, the car drives up to a red zone and this saucy little female gets out and starts walking away. The parking officer said to her, "hey, you can't park there." She said, "write it up if you want. I'm not going to pay it." Then she walked into the building. I was in plain clothes but this kind of offended my sense of justice. I asked the parking officer how many tickets for that vehicle he can provide me copies of. He had seven copies with him and said he could probably come up with ten more. I took the seven with me, drove down to the court liaison unit and determined that these had not been paid. I drove back and the car was still there, so bingo. Another victory for the good guys. Boy was she surprised.

The bottom line is we created a Frequent Parking Violators Unit in the Department of Transportation that began their existence by bringing in over $3,000,000 during their first full year of operation. I understand they are doing far better than that now.