I’ll do a lot for a good slice of pizza – and pretty much any pizza is good pizza. I like thin crust and thick crust, New York style, Chicago style, plain cheese, combo, pepperoni, and even the fancy stuff with salad on top. I do not discriminate.
Some parking enforcement officers in Salt Lake City, Utah will do a lot for pizza, too. They didn’t sell their souls or anything, but they took free pizza as a trade for parking. Now they’ve lost their jobs. According to usnews.com, several Salt Lake officers accepted pizza from a local pizza place for refraining from writing tickets or voiding tickets already written to the restaurant’s owners and employees. Lots of pizza exchanged hands. There is no word on toppings.
Officer Jeff Clegg admitted to the improper conduct and turned in his fellow officers. He said the exchanges went on for two years. The restaurant owner denies the scheme.
Clegg estimates that the officers could have written three parking tickets a day for the pizzeria, meaning as much as $19,000 in fines wasn’t collected.
I’d like to imagine these officers didn’t intend to steal thousands of dollars from their city. Maybe one afternoon they got a free slice just for being in the neighborhood and then going easy on tickets seemed like a nice way to return the favor. I don’t know who’s dumb enough to verbalize an arrangement like this.
Just goes to show how easy it is to be an officer of the law one day and a criminal the next. And all for a slice of pizza.
Read the article here.
