Posts Tagged 'parking enforcement'

Parking Enforcement: Still Violating Laws

Published May 8, 2010 Photographers' Rights 6 Comments
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Excuse us while we go off topic to cover one of our pet peeves: parking enforcement abuse of power. See the above video and learn that this lady (#01795):
1. did not pay the meter;
2. parked more than 18 inches from the curb, with her vehicle’s back end sticking out into the traffic lane;
3. was running personal errands in an official LADOT vehicle on the taxpayer’s dime.
And it’s not the first time. We’ve posted on it before, and LAist.com ran a similar story last week. Apparently parking enforcement agents are above the law, which is mind-boggling. The mayor — yeah, what can you do? Fire department — sure, park in a red zone and get your lunch. But these low-level hourly employees, who are tasked with enforcing parking laws, are abusing their official LADOT cars, using them as carte blanche to basically do whatever the hell they want, and in doing so, are the city’s biggest hypocrites.

The Dirty Truth About Street Cleaning in LA

Published November 2, 2009 Photographers' Rights 3 Comments
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In a piece reminiscent of classic “60 Minutes,” USC journalism student Matt Schrader exposes the dirty side of parking enforcement and street cleaning in downtown Los Angeles. Schrader found that while parking enforcement is out in droves ticketing cars, and mostly on street cleaning days (making the city $15,000 an hour!), the streets they’re patrolling aren’t even being cleaned. The best line of the piece is from a guy who got ticketed on one of those streets: “They have the manpower to ticket you, but they don’t have the manpower to actually do the job.”

This is an issue near and dear to our heart, and Schrader told us he was inspired in part by our earlier video where we caught our local parking enforcement agent parking in the loading zone while getting lunch. While LA slides further into bankruptcy and mismanagement, somehow, some way, parking enforcement manages to probably be the city’s most efficient department.  

And though LA’s government is indeed so broken that nothing will likely ever be done, it’s nice to know someone is at least trying to keep them accountable. Long live journalism.

Loading or Carb-Loading?

Published March 29, 2009 Photographers' Rights 85 Comments
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With this post, we diverge from our central theme of photography and photographers’ rights to just peoples’ rights — that  is to say, our rights as people to have our tax dollars well-spent and our city employees follow the very laws they enforce.

Case in point: this video, taken this past week in East Hollywood, where our dogged local parking enforcement officer uses the loading zone as a parking spot for her lunch break. This is the same parking officer who tirelessly drives up and down our neighborhood blocks all day long, looking for cars on the wrong side of the street on street cleaning days and in red zones and with expired meters.

Somewhere we missed it in the Los Angeles city code where parking enforcement officers don’t need to obey the law. Wow, what a job perk! If someone has a copy of that, please send it our way.

*Shot with the Vievu wearable recording device.

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