Wow – No Wonder People Hate Parking Police

There is a crew working on the front of our building, resurfacing the framework and painting and generally cleaning up the place. They parked their truck in front and while they were up on the ladder, the parking police came by and gave them a ticket. The irony is that the “no parking” sign was installed by the building owners because the city refused to do so. Folks were parking in front and causing all sorts of havoc with traffic. They told me that they had a conversation with the cop and she told them that if that was true, they could be cited for putting up an improper sign.

Our area is an industrial area with many of the buildings having no sidewalks or curbs. Since we are near the airport, there are car rental holding lots all over, and a car carrier arrives almost daily to drop off and pick up cars. As I was coming back from lunch, I watched the enforcement officer walk up to a car that had just been off loaded and was sitting on the street, still running but with no driver. She had her ticket writer out and was entering data. She had just come from nailing the crew at my office.

Ours is a “seedy backwater near LAX,” to quote Forbes when it was describing our neighbor Neutrogena’s headquarters location. There is little elegant, but it is workable, has a number of manufacturing plants, and is an area that employees hundreds of people. The most elegant structure is Wallypark which is right next door. Parking is a challenge at best, and there is always some semi driver jockeying for position so he can load or unload his cargo. We all just slowly move around the street, dodging trucks and vans, and make it safely to work.

In both these cases, the vehicles in question were part of the normal scene in the area. Commerce taking care of commerce. It’s no wonder that parking is on the top of everyone’s s#@t list. Common sense says that those citations should not have been written. And I will tell you, when I saw the officer heading for that car just off loaded from a carrier, I actually saw a gleam in her eye. “By golly, I nailed one.” The problem is that the driver and the construction crew saw that gleam, too.

JVH