Re: “She Claims Parking Ticket Is False”
Hours after Josie Roman went public yesterday with her complaint that on Wednesday, July 8, she had received “a fake parking ticket” on an alleged street sweeping day on Hayden Avenue, a presumably satisfactory solution materialized.
Capt. Ron Iizuka of the Culver City Police Dept. explained the cause of the problem.
“We discovered that one of the street sweeping signs posted on Hayden was wrong,” he said. “All of the street sweeping signs said Thursday – except for the sign where she was parked. It said Wednesday.
“The officer who gave her the ticket,” said Capt. Iizuka, “saw that the sign by her car said Wednesday. And that day was Wednesday.
“It is ambiguous.
“We are going to take care of that citation. They are going to take it back.”
As for Ms. Roman, Capt. Iizuka said that if she had telephoned the Police Dept. immediately, “we probably could have rectified the situation.”
Ms. Roman disputes that statement. “(A)ccording to the literature on the citation,” she wrote, “Culver City’s parking tickets can only be contested by mail, and the citation does even include a phone number for an information line.”
The gaffe was so obvious to her that “I am convinced this officer writes bogus tickets daily.”
In Ms. Roman’s letter to City Councilperson Meghan Sahli-Wells and this newspaper, she rapped City Hall hard on its knuckles. “It is sickening to me,” she wrote, “how cities, as the wasteful, unproductive institutions they are, choose to continue sucking the blood of citizens.”
Countering, Capt. Iizuka said that “there is no evil intent anywhere. It is our responsibility. We made a mistake and rectified the problem.”
In defense of the department, Capt. Iizuka said that “we are human beings, not just robots.
“The officer saw that the sign by her car said no parking on that day. What are you going to do?”
My neighbor had a similar incident a few years back with a parking ticket given incorrectly with regards to a street sweeping sign.
He told me that he called the CCPD and they said that he had to write a letter.
I asked him to give me the ticket. I called the CCPD and spoke with an officer in parking enforcement, told him the problem and he said tell Mr. X that to dismiss the ticket. I asked him if he would send me an e-mail stating the dismissal of the ticket and within 5 min. I had the email. NO problem at all.
This is why I love living in this great city.
It will be much better if you would not get ticketed for parking after the street sweeper has passed. Santa Monica has such a rule. Is that true in Culver City?
I have found that CCPD Parking Enforcement is extremely careful about issuing citations. When I have had to interact with Traffic Engineering after discovering discrepancies in parking signs around the Vets Park neighborhood they have been very responsive to investigate the problem — unfortunately, it seems to take forever to get the new signs made and installed….