KPRC-2 Stephen Dean reports on another of Mayor White’s bad ideas in action:
A new state law intended to crack down on one type of parking problem is leading to other parking hassles, Local 2 Investigates reported Thursday.
Parking citation books handed out by the City of Houston are allowing security guards and everyday citizens to cause major inconvenience and frustration, leading some people to pay fines that they are not legally required to pay.
They are the same ticket forms that are issued to police and parking meter attendants throughout the city.
Colette Clift-Mayers of west Houston found out the hard way when she said a private security guard rudely informed her he was writing her a ticket.
She said she was parked legally in a private lot with a storeowner’s permission when she was ticketed with an official Houston Municipal Court parking citation.
She said the man seemed power-hungry, able to hand out the same tickets being issued by police officers and parking meter attendants throughout Houston. The security guard routinely wears commando boots and drives a car that looks similar to a police cruiser.
“I believe that he sits in the parking lot and contrives to write tickets,” she said. “I think that that is his whole purpose throughout the day.”
Local 2 Investigates recorded the security guard in action at a strip center on Eldridge Parkway at Briar Forest Drive.
A review of municipal court records found he wrote some tickets for handicap parking space violators, which is legal.
But he also forced people to pay up or fight in court such violations as double parking, being parked “not wholly within a space” and parking in a fire lane. The ticket book issued by the city gives him much more power than other security guards, who would normally have to call police to have official citations written.
Houston’s top parking official, Liliana Rambo, said “We will make sure that we call the volunteer in, and that we explain to the volunteer what they’re doing wrong. If it’s something that keeps on happening, we could revoke the privilege of that person writing those tickets.”
She said citizens can appeal their tickets through a hearing officer at municipal court if they receive tickets from volunteers that have nothing to do with parking for the disabled.
Rambo said abuses are rare for the 450 volunteers trained to write handicap-parking tickets. She calls the city’s program is a huge success that is being mirrored by smaller cities.
Asked whether the training for volunteers is truly getting the point across to volunteers that they have no legal authority to write tickets for any other violations, Rambo answered, “I believe so.”
Liliana believes so?
Nice.
And if her belief doesn’t conform with reality, well, you can always experience the fun of appealing your fraudulent ticket from her Busybody Brigade at muni court. Good times!
We believe we were right to question this bad idea of Mayor White from the start.
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