Police let drivers off the hook with a warning for violation they could not have known they committed.
By David Whitehead
This absurd enforcement action by the Redondo Beach Police Department was probably a bureaucratic snafu the chain of command decided to proceed with despite its highly questionable legality. It was clearly an unwarranted violation of the rights of law abiding citizens, but just to keep things in perspective, it wasn’t the Rodney King incident either. For me it was just stupid and annoying.
On Sunday, November 8 my girlfriend and I parked in the public lot at Riviera Village to take a beach walk and do some shopping at Trader Joes. We were taking advantage of the free Sunday parking at metered spaces we have enjoyed for years. As we were walking down Catalina Avenue, we noticed a parking enforcement officer who was placing blue slips on the windshields of every vehicle on the street.
When we returned to the car, we found one of the ubiquitous blue slips on our car. This wasn’t a ticket. It was a notice informing us that effective on the day in question we were required to “pay at metered spaces from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday in the Riviera Village.” In essence, this was a notice informing us we had parked in violation of the law. However, there was a catch. The placards on the meters still stated metered parking was enforced Monday through Saturday as it has been for years.
Apparently, the city decided on the start dates for the new policy and had these notices printed before city crews had an opportunity to post the new enforcement times on the meters. So instead of delaying the start dates for the new enforcement policy, which would have been appropriate, they let police staff issue courtesy warnings to drivers letting them know they have broken a law they could not have possibly knoww about. That’s a very Soviet approach to implementing a new law to say the least.
They probably didn’t consider this a big deal because the forms were intended as a courtesy to let people know they would not start issuing real citations on Sundays until November 15. However, this is a big deal for two very important reasons:
First, what gives law enforcement the right to take any kind of enforcement action, whether it be an arrest, the actual issuing of a citation or, yes, even a courtesy warning for violations of the law that clearly were not committed by anyone. This is a banana republic approach to law enforcement which American law enforcement agencies have grown far to caviler about in recent years. It’s also extremely unprofessional and they should be ashamed of themselves.
I realize the gravity of the intrusion on my rights as a citizen was not extreme in this case and there are no damages to show for it other than a slight rise in my blood pressure. It’s the blatant disregard for the legal process on the part of law enforcement I find disturbing and we should all fear the kind of slippery slope these things inevitably lead to.
The second reason I find this a big deal rests entirely on the city council’s shoulders. With retail establishments and restaurants struggling to survive the worst economic downturn since the great depression, what right does a government body have to ease its own fiscal problems at the expense of struggling businesses who pay the lion’s share of local taxes.
Parking meters hurt small businesses more than anything else. Large retail establishments usually supply their own off-street parking under their own control and they rarely if ever create obstacles for their customers to patronize them. Storefront merchants on the other hand have no control over city-controlled parking meters and these business abatement devices discourage people from stopping to shop, pure and simple. And on Sundays, when local shops and restaurants cater to people who want to stroll, shop and dine leisurely, meters create an obstacle they really don’t need right now. Plus, its dubious whether they will pick up enough revenue on Sundays to justify keeping parking enforcement officers on duty for an extra day. This is a bad policy and it should be repealed forthwith. Or at least implemented in a way that doesn’t violate the law.
David Whitehead is the publisher of Business Insider Magazine.
