[Editor’s Note: The following letter was addressed to City Councilperson Meghan Sahli-Wells.] 

Hello Meghan,   

It has been eight months since we brought you as a speaker to our panel at Digital Hollywood last October 2at the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey.  Once again, thank you for coming and I trust you received your reimbursement for the valet parking as you requested and that you saw the press release I sent you:

http://www.prlog.org/12387819-enhancing-the-role-of-women-in-technology-entertainment-and-entrepreneurship.html

I am writing on a not very happy news. On Wednesday July 8, at 5 a.m., I got a fake parking ticket on Hayden Avenue, south of National. The ticket cites Street Sweeping as the violation.

Never mind the fact that the officer wrote the address across the street on the ticket. It also happens that on Hayden Avenue, Street Sweeping sign restrictions are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, not on Wednesdays. See photos of the ticket and of my view from my driver’s seat through my car’s front window while still parked, taken an hour after the citation was issued.

Unless Culver City hires parking enforcement officers who are illiterate or blind or have 0 IQ, this is not an error.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is not a mistake. There is no reason whatsoever for any parking enforcement officer to be driving by on this street at 5 a.m. on a Wednesday, before meters start, other than being fishing for victims in order to meet his quota to get a bonus, overtime, a Rolex, a luxury vacation or whatever your city gives parking officers as incentives for writing the most tickets. I am convinced this officer writes bogus tickets daily.

Now I have to go out of my way, spend time and money to write, print, photocopy and send in a dispute because, according to the literature on the citation, Culver City’s parking tickets can only be contested by mail and the citation does even include a phone number for an information line.

If this happens again I might do more than that. I have ways to reach 40,000 outlets with a press release. Having a legal background, I know how it is to fight multi-billion-dollar corporations in court and build a class action lawsuit. As it is, Culver City already owes me money for my time in dealing with this.

It is sickening to me how cities, as the wasteful, unproductive institutions they are, choose to continue sucking the blood of citizens. They motivate officers to write fake parking tickets, on top of all the other city taxes, only to finance cities’ slow, inefficient bureaucracy and the excessively high salaries of their lazy, unproductive, overpaid and underworked employees.

Rather than firing liars like this officer, some cities appraise them, put them on top of their hall of fame and give them bonuses, overtime and luxury items. They promote corruption and lies as the easiest way to climb to the top and “do your job,” which is nothing but bringing more money to the city by any means, including harassment, extortion, and robbery.

Former Reason staffer Radley Balko, now an investigative reporter for the Huffington Post and author of the new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, says that parking and traffic quotas are not only a nuisance as they induce constant citizen harassment. They turn into tens of millions of dollars of wasted business productivity. They infringe on public safety and should be deemed unconstitutional.

If Culver City cares for justice, this anonymous officer, who didn’t even dare to write his name on the citation, will be prosecuted with felony charges, which is what other cities are doing.

See examples below:

http://www.policeone.com/officer-misconduct-internal-affairs/articles/1677772-Dallas-officer-fired-for-writing-false-tickets/

http://www.nbc12.com/story/24236509/draft-kelly-story

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/nyregion/08traffic.html

There is an Hispanic saying: When you see a cockroach, 200 are hiding on the walls.

Sincerely,

Josie Roman

Ms. Roman may be contacted at jor004@yahoo.com