For the added theatre.
[pedantic nitpick]
The person guilty of manslaughter is the person who created a dangerous situation that lead to someone’s death. The person placing the sticker didn’t create a dangerous situation. The person who chose to drive the vehicle, despite the obstructed vision, created the dangerous situation, and thus would be the only one guilty of manslaughter. The sticker placer is guilty only of vandalism.
[/pedantic nitpick]
“Forget it, Jamie. It’s Crippletown.”
Dude, people are going to park in handicapped spaces. And as much as the cops seem to interested or what have you… they are just placating you. No cop wants to deal with a minor parking violation, and calling 911 probably doesn’t help your situation.
Sure they might have told you to call before, but put yourself in their shoes for a minute… Your average cop either 1) wants to be left alone 2) is busy pulling over random people looking for bigger crimes 3) wishing they were a detective and/or cracking a big case.
Now sure, the guy is probably an asshole considering he does it on purpose and has it down to a science to avoid a ticket. If it was me and I wanted to make a crusade of this, I would just photograph these people and report them every month or so to the local police station’s head of traffic enforcement and demand something be done in an in person meeting.
Public shaming works wonders in such cases.
Even more so for businesses.
Get the name of the company that owns the car. Then write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper “Company X executives steal handicapped parking spaces”. Explain the situation in the letter, mentioning the company name as often as possible.
Or contact the investigative reporter at your local TV station. This would be a good story for them, because they could easily get video of the guy working out in the gym, coming out to the car, and then confront him on camera.
Do you have a local activist group for the handicapped? Contact them, and they can arrange a picket line in front of the office of the business that owns the car. A picket line of people in wheelchairs & walkers will make good visuals for local TV & newspapers.
Electronic media is easy nowadays.
- Get the email addresses of as many employees of that company as you can (from their website) and send them all an email pointing out how this fellow employee is embarrassing them & their company.
- Start an online petition, asking this company t stop stealing parking from the handicapped. Should be able to get a few thousand signatures easily, especially if you spread word online to the handicapped community. When you get a good number, like 5,000 signatures, print a paper copy* and deliver it to the company president. Or get someone in a wheelchair to deliver it. (Make sure the press is present for this delivery.)
- Or set up a blog, with daily entries and photos of this car in the handicapped spot.
The key to all of this is publicity, to the company that owns the car. Businesses are very sensitive to bad publicity, and take action when an employee is bringing them bad press.
This might not be as effective if it turns out that this guy is the President or Owner of the business. But even then it will probably have an effect, eventually.
- That old continuous computer paper works best – you get a petition that’s yards long – great visual.
Also, about calling 911. Locally, they tell us to call 911 whenever you want a police car to respond (or fire or ambulance). They prefer to get all the calls to 911; then they have people to evaluate them and assign priorities.
See, that is what is different when it comes to well-to-do, affluent suburban communities compared to more blighted urban areas; the police departments really do have the resources, time and manpower available in order to efficiently enforce such laws. This was evidenced by the unbelievably fast response time here; and in other similar situations (it is not only me who calls police but the gym employees themselves).
It’s not me who is the one phoning the police department, usually. This was the first time I had done so at this gym. Before this time, I had reported the cars illegally parked to the front desk staff and they called police. And they really did. Violation of their parking laws is very frowned upon at my gym and they take it seriously.
Well here is what I do know so far: This man is the owner of the business; whatever the business is. I don’t know anything about the business at all-other than by the looks of his car, it ain’t treatin’ him too bad.
I guess things are different everywhere. I’ve lived in 3 major cities and about 4-5 minor ones that were more affluent and in my experience even those smaller localities had a non-emergency line for police reports, parking/traffic complaints, etc. Most of the time the dispatchers would be upset if you called 911 to report something like this. To say nothing of 311, which is the dedicated non-emergency line in a lot of major metropolitan areas.
But yeah, I second the public shaming idea. Especially if it’s a business.
Letting your parking meter expire is a minor violation; that’ll cost you about $10.
Parking illegally in a handicapped spot is not a minor violation. I inadvertently parked in a handicapped spot once[sup]*[/sup]. I came back to find a $125 ticket on my windshield.
*In my defense, the blue-wheelchair-logo sign was too high up on the lamppost for me to read from the driver’s seat, and I didn’t realize that the numbered sign for a handicapped spot has a green post. I paid the ticket without complaint, but I told the city that if they are truly interested in keeping those spots open for handicapped folks (as opposed to collecting tickets from people who shouldn’t park there), they might want to put the blue sign lower down on the lamppost…
Sorry, didn’t see the username when I replied.
All the people who are advocating shaming the company are missing a fairly important point: Jamie has no way of knowing what company it is. Clearly it’s not marked on the car (since Jamie was prowling around the car peering at the temporary pass).
The police officer sure as shit isn’t going to divulge registration information to random irate muscled-up parking vigilante either.
I would recommend that you call the police and go about your business but you clearly get too much out of playing amateur parking detective/superhero. Eventually this guy is going to get one ticket too many and stop illegally parking at the gym (though probably not at the grocery store).
That has not been my experience.
There are people who make a living supplying this type of information. If the OP wants to spend a few dollars it would be trivial to find out the owner.
So he should hire a private investigator to find out who is using an expired handicapped tag? Wow, this thread keeps getting saner and saner!
I didn’t read any advocacy in kayaker’s post; just a statement of what is possible.
Exactly.
This topic is Ambivalids pet issue. This topic is the whole reason he joined the board in the first place. To bitch about people parking in handicapped spots that shouldn’t be and GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!
blah blah blah
Go into the gym, tell the staff that a Mercedes Benz license plate XYZ-123 is being towed*, request that they page the owner.
You’re welcome.
*or left his lights on, or is being bashed with a tire iron by a pissed off guy in a wheelchair, whatever floats your boat.
Or someone keyed it, or an anonymous phone call…this is a very, very good idea!