Crime of the Week

Not guilty, your honor.

Just a couple of weeks after Curbed.com posted a mention of Matt Schrader's video report about the City of Los Angeles issuing street cleaning parking tickets on streets where no actual street sweeping was taking place, I came home from work to find this on the windshield of my car:

L.A.'s new money-maker?

This seems to be a new variation on the tactic mentioned in Schrader's report: TICKETING CARS AFTER THE STREET SWEEPER HAS ALREADY PASSED BY.

I moved my BMW (an old beater, not a new 7er, BTW) into that parking spot at 9:10 am . . . ten minutes after the street sweeper had come by.

Not only did I hear the sweeper go by (I live right upstairs and the sweeper has been on the dot at 9 am for the past 5 years or more), but I also saw the wet tracks from the sweeper brushes as I parked my car in that spot and noticed the nice clean curbside.

Evidently parking officer Franklin (badge no. 2192) doesn't seem to understand that if the street sweeper has already gone by, there's no reason to issue a ticket. Franklin seems to be late on the uptake, or got a late start this morning and decided to ticket cars anyway to make up for lost time.

Note the time the citation was issued: 9:42 am, near the end of the two-hour time slot for street sweeping . . . and in my experience, the street sweeper has never come by twice on the same day.

On average, I get three to four tickets a year, legitimately, and I pay every citation right away. This one I'm going to fight.