Elaine was cheerful, and well liked. The town of Middleton,CT, was stunned when it learned that she stole $1060 over a three month period. She was placed on administrative leave. And has since announced her retirement. She will receive retirement benefits. Get the details here.
Elaine has worked as a parking attendant for the city for 24 years. Now lets assume that she had been stealing prior to the last three months. If that was the case, then we can assume she has stolen about $4000 a year, or nearly $100 grand. Not bad for perky, cheerful Elaine. By the way, she made almost $16 an hour, plus benefits, making her one of the highest paid parking attendants in the country.
I love it. The cops realized there was a problem when Elaine went on vacation and the take increased while she was gone. They then installed a CCTV camera and caught her in the act. Got a warrant and found evidence in her trash at home…Now that’s good police work. My guess is that if all parking operators had the courage to arrest, indict, and convict thieves like Elaine there would be a lot fewer such problems.
I’m told that typically what happens in these cases is that the attendant is fired. That’s probably because they don’t have the persistence of the Middleton police. These folks knew what they were about. I love the part where they went in at night and screwed with the light in the booth so when Elaine came in she would call for a new light and that’s when they installed the camera. In four days they had enough video evidence to get their warrant.
This is the stuff that great parking stories are made of.
JVH
One Response
Great story. The part about maybe using “numbered tickets” is simply amazing. It seems that the police department overseeing the parking authority is just as guilty. Guilty of running such an inept operation.