No clue how they do it in SD, but in LA the guy has a little round thing on wheels with a handle. Maybe 10 inches in diameter. He unlocks the meter, and removes the coin holder and places in on the top of the round container. Something on the top of the collection container opens the coin holder and gravity takes over. When coins stop falling he puts this meter back together and moves on to the next.
The coin collector never touches coins.
Seems to me like he does, but maybe I should look more closely.
This system is used in Philadelphia as well.
I can’t now find the story, but a guy in Brisbane ripped off an amazing amount of money in this way. IIRC he was careful to build up his take very gradually so that there was no sudden drop in income to be noted.
Nowadays the meters are emptied using the type of theft proof system described above, plus the collectors work in teams of two, which I think are rotated so as to avoid collusion.
Bloke’s name was Gadaloff. He was a supervisor in the section that collected the money from parking meters. He got about $1.9 million. He wasn’t so careful - he splashed his wealth around like no-one’s business - huge house, great wine collection and so on. He got caught because the authorities noticed discrepancies in the income and the fact that it seemed to be going downhill for no sensible reason. So they eliminated all other explanations, and started focussing on Gadaloff’s area. They started weighing the coin before and after counting by gadaloff, etc and then put hidden surveillance cameras in and caught him.
Here’s a cite:- http://archive.sclqld.org.au/qjudgment/1999/QCA99-286.pdf
Go to para 8. My recollection is that you are correct about the new steps in place to prevent recurrences.
So my anecdote was irrelevant since he was taking the money at the central office and not at the meters. But I like you do seem to remember that the fallout from the incident nonetheless resulted in tightening up of collection processes.
Wait, if for 1$ Canadian you can buy $0.9839 cents US… doesn’t that mean a Canadian dollar is worth less than 1 US dollar? About 2 cents less?
Where I live (Germany, but I noticed this trend in other European countries as well), parking meters have been replaced, in the past few years, by electronic ticket printers. Instead of setting up a meter at every single parking space, there’s one or a few printers for the entire parking lot, or a section of a street. Patrons insert coins into this machine and choose the desired parking time. The machine prints a slip of paper designating the parking time, and you have to place this slip in your car on the instrument panel where it’s clearly visible from the outside.
I guess these devices register the number of tickets printed and the amount of money collected, so there’s no chance for embezzlers to rake their margin.
Oops! My bad :smack: . Yes, you’re right. That doesn’t alter the fact that ours has been worth more than yours quite recently, and is hovering around par.