Please note: the following rant contains many, many cynical and sarcastic references to our public servants and their work, made in the great tradition of anti-government protest upon which our country was built. This rant is NOT, however, an invitation or urging to carry out, or espousal or advocacy of, violence or harassment of any city employee or official – and it should not be taken as such by anyone. In other words, best to be patient and stay well within the law when you’re fighting city hall.
Parking tickets are among our city’s worst and most immoral forms of de facto taxation and injustice: there is little or no representation or due process involved, and the scale of the government’s enforcement efforts is sweeping. What it comes down to is that it remains the burden of the (already busy) citizen to prove he or she was not parked illegally.
The remedy to this situation might be to reverse the burden of proof, requiring all traffic officers to provide photographic evidence of any parking offense. Both the inevitable bureaucratic burden and the predictable outcry over invasion of privacy (where we park and when -- and why is the government keeping such close tabs on us?) might lead the city to give up on parking enforcement altogether.
Meanwhile, we could shame the men and women of the parking enforcement profession into leaving the field. The goal would be to make parking enforcement such a scorned line of work that no one would be willing to undertake it. Along these lines, if you see a parking enforcement officer yapping away on a cellular phone in a public vehicle instead of doing his or her job -- and earning an easy salary off the taxpayers' backs -- you could snap his or her picture, email it to the bosses at parking enforcement headquarters, and post it where the public can see it. We do this to shame parents who withhold child support and to humiliate the Johns who pick up prostitutes -- why not do it to the parking pickpockets?
Additionally, we could make it easier for unlucky recipients of parking tickets to appeal their citations while we urge the public to flood the city's computer network and processing clerks with an appeal of each and every ticket received, so that the system breaks down. The idea is to launch a sort of a "Denial of Service" attack against the parking enforcement apparatus, designed to bring the "Evil Empire" down by clogging, entangling and choking it with its own bureaucratic red tape. If you're eager to get started on your own appeal, the legalese you'll need to wade through is found here: http://lacodes.lacity.org/NXT/gateway.dll/lamc/code00000.htm/chapter00008.htm
Most of the justifications for parking enforcement run as such: we need to (1) keep access to fire hydrants clear, (2) keep streets swept and (3) keep the flow of customers to business uninterrupted. I say in response:
(1) You would think by now someone would have developed technology to hook up what seem to be somewhat thin fire hoses to hydrants from below, above or between cars. This challenge does not rise to the level of a NASA Mars mission. If you can figure out how to do this, we sure could use the extra spots. Incidentally, many of these hydrants around the city do not even have red paint on the curb that runs below them. How hard is it to at least paint these curbs?
In the meantime, without any red visible beneath a hydrant, how are we supposed to know where we can park and where we cannot? The signs are rarely crystal clear. And why is it that Postal Service vehicles always get to park in the red or right in front of fire hydrants without incurring penalties? Mail vehicles may carry the USPS logo, but they endanger your life and mine just as much as any other vehicle when they impede access to hydrants. Apparently, however, our various levels of government get to conveniently pick and choose what laws with which they themselves will comply.
(2) I would gladly do away with street sweeping "service" in front of the property where I live in exchange for the tickets it has cost me. Upkeep of the street in front of one's house should be his or her own responsibility. If you don't want the eyesore of trash out there, go out and pick it up yourself. Surely the cost of the tickets given out on street-sweeping day is a massive overbilling for the cost of keeping streets swept. I am hard-pressed to believe that the sums the city rakes in from street-sweeping tickets reflect the real-market expense of driving a dumb machine up and down the block. But (sigh) I suppose if the tickets truly are meant to be a deterrent against blocking street sweepers, then the money should go right back to the keeping our streets clean -- and not to the city's general fund.
(3) Let business owners buy - yes, buy! - from the city the public parking spots in front of their businesses. That way, it falls to the business owners to regulate the spaces. As property owners, they would have the legal authority to eject any driver (and his or her car of course) who has overstayed. If the regulation of private commerce is such a pressing "public" need, shouldn't the private business owners be taking it on themselves in the first place? And besides, when the government hands out expensive parking tickets, I would think it would ultimately do more to drive customers away from businesses than to keep the stream of customers flowing in. I know that I'm pretty much turned off to running some errand in a place like Larchmont Village now that I've been ticketed there.
By the way, in the context of the next few paragraphs, I've been told during some amusing exchanges with parking personnel that the titles "traffic officer" and "parking enforcement officer" are synonymous, and that an officer's traffic and parking duties alternate. Well, then shame on them both.
It comes as no surprise to me that to be a traffic officer, a General Equivalency Degree (GED) is "desired" but not "required." Plainly, only the lowest of standards are maintained in the hiring of our city staff. See the job description here. Among officers' glorious duties: "May check on Crossing Guards to determine their presence at assigned times, proper uniform and demeanor;" My God, how bad of a >> crossing guard << do you have to be that the fricking traffic cops are dispatched to keep their spying eyes on you.
I want to point out that, as part of their duties, traffic officers are required to keep a "daily log which describes activities during a tour of duty including citations issued, citizen complaints, or unusual situations in which the officer was required to direct traffic;" I would love to read these daytime diaries. I wonder how many officers note in their logs the many, many minutes they sit >> parked << in public vehicles yapping on their cell phones. At least three times this year I have come across parking enforcement officers parked on roadsides, leisurely immobilized while chatting on the phone. Each time I have pulled up alongside them and politely requested that they get back to work as long as they are on city time.
A brief anecdote before wrapping up this rant ...
Recently, I bought a new car. The week I bought it, I came out of the house to find an officer about to write me a ticket for being in the path of the street sweeper. Fortunately, he relented and let me off with a warning. The next week or so after that, I actually did receive a street sweeping ticket. This was the city's inauguration of a vehicle that did not yet even have license plates! So, if these parking "enforcers" are willing to stand there and humiliate themselves by straining to peer into the car to record the VIN# like some Florida chad inspector, then that says a lot about them and the lengths the city will go to for a quick buck.
For my part, I am resigned to the fact that my lifestyle or personal parking habits just make me a magnet for parking tickets. I estimate I have spent more than $1,000 or more paying parking tickets in my decade of driving in Los Angeles. But I'm just a guy going about my business, trying to get ahead in this maddening megatropolis. Am I above the law? No. But the petty parking pestilence I have experienced in Los Angeles has had a major impact on the formation of my adult political beliefs. I admit I definitely have many issues with the parking people. Yes, parking enforcement has become metaphysical.
Finally, if it sounds like I am belittling the ranks of parking enforcement officers and the work they do, I freely admit that I absolutely am. Moreover, in the aftermath of some horrendously unfair tickets, I have been known to smile at an officer and elevate the middle lane of my five-finger freeway. Tickets may cost me, but at least speech is free.
By the way, would someone like to supply the Pentagon with the GPS coordinates of these offices so that the military can test its next generation of cruise missiles on the buildings in which they are housed? (During off-hours of course.)
Vital Safety sells parking enforcement devices and services. Note the local client list and graphic depicting a boot device apparently capable of immobilizing an aircraft. I suppose this is for all the Los Angeles residents who can't meet their LearJet payments. Personally, I think this guy is insane to list his contact info on here. But if you have had first-hand experience with the devices he offers, it looks like he is ready to receive your feedback.
This is the (hideous) website of company run by a former L.A. Parking "executive." KSBS Services offers a $700 training video (obviously it costs a fortune to train the brainless to enforce parking laws!) to teach parking enforcement officers how to interact with their peeved clientele. The warm and fuzzy video ( http://www.ksbservices.com/previewhq.wmv ) depicts officers being cordially received by the public in a variety of potentially hostile situations. But she can file this video under "Fantasy" -- because I've never witnessed such milkman-like treatment of our meter maids by the public.
Posted by: Marc_Salvatierra on Sunday, March 14, 2004 - 07:43 PM
