Parking Ticket Appeals Office Has Seen It All

A thick wall of bulletproof glass and a beefy armed security guard may sound a bit excessive for a nondescript Los Angeles city office where motorists appeal parking tickets and beseech hearing officers to release their towed cars.

But the office can bring out the worst in its visitors. Here, police officers, priests and U.S. Secret Service agents have tried to use their positions to get out of tickets. Some of those who come to protest end up begging. Others cry or plead. And some tip over chairs or slam their fists into the furniture.

So hearing officers have learned to hope for the best, but to be ready for anything.

Consider the recent hearing for Cleofus Grant, whose Dodge sedan was recently towed off an East Los Angeles street because of nine outstanding parking tickets, totaling more than $700 in fines.

He was cool when he sat down in front of hearing officer Sukhbir Mathew at the parking adjudication office behind Los Angeles City Hall. Grant argued that most of the tickets were issued before he bought the car in February.

Mathew, a law school graduate and mother-to-be, responded that parking enforcement officials had no records that he had registered the car in his name.

Grant began to seethe. “Why do you have stupid ... people working for you?” he bellowed.

After Grant showed proof that he bought the car in February, Mathew agreed to waive the eight tickets issued under the previous owner. But she said Grant still owed $25 for having an expired registration and $35 to remove the Denver boot that parking officials locked to the car’s left front wheel.

That’s when Grant blew up. He cursed, demanded his paperwork and stormed out of the office, blasting Mathew with profanity.

Mathew shrugged it off. An occupational hazard.

In the 10 years since the state Legislature transferred parking citation appeals out of the municipal courts and gave the responsibility to local city officials, Mathew and her colleagues in the city’s parking adjudication unit have just about seen it all.

Most people who appeal parking tickets are civil and friendly. But in addition to those who become emotional, there are those who try all manner of defenses, including poverty.

“This little bit of money means a great deal to me--a parking meter payment, diapers for my unborn child, a taco with extra cheese,” one West Hollywood woman recently wrote. “Sorry for the humor,” she added. “My life is so pathetic--I need it.”

The appeal was rejected.

Given the place that cars hold in the life of Southern California, parking officers and others understand why drivers go to great lengths to protect their driving privileges. After all, a car is about as essential in Southern California as snowshoes are in Alaska.

“It’s a nasty situation when someone’s car is picked up,” said Jay Carsman, the city’s parking systems coordinator.

But Los Angeles parking adjudication officers are a tough lot, who are trained not to let emotions cloud the issue.

“You have to be compassionate toward them, but at the same time you are regulated by the laws of the city,” said Mathew, who has worked as an adjudication officer for nearly five years.

Each year, she and 20 other hearing officers in Los Angeles hear about 22,000 parking ticket appeals and 3,600 requests to release vehicles that are towed and impounded.

About 60% of the appeals are rejected, Carsman said. When hearing officers grant an appeal, it is for a few specific circumstances, he said.

For example, the hearing officers can erase a ticket if a parking sign is missing or vandalized. Citations also can be removed if a motorist parked illegally because of a medical emergency or a mechanical failure.

But even then, the car owners must provide the proof for such exceptions, either with photographs or the sworn testimony of witnesses. In parking adjudication hearings, it is guilty until proven innocent.

For example, hearing officer T. Taylor said a Catholic priest recently appealed a parking ticket, arguing that he stopped in a no-parking zone because he had to administer the last rites to a dying man. The priest, who appeared at the hearing wearing his white collar and black suit, offered no other proof but his sworn testimony.

Taylor is still mulling over his ruling, but he said he is leaning toward rejecting the priest’s appeal.

For hearing officers, some appeals can be emotionally draining.

Adjudication officer Jean Tyree, who was a parking enforcement officer for 20 years, said she received a written appeal of a parking ticket from a woman who rambled on for five pages about her medical problems and the untimely death of her sister. “This one wore me out,” she said.

Tyree and her colleagues have also heard many excuses that they have found easy to dismiss.

One woman, for instance, had 40 tickets, mostly for parking in front of her house on the days the street was swept. She argued that it was too tiring to get up to move the car.

And then there was the petite motorist who received a parking citation and argued that the parking sign was too high for her to read.

Several motorists have argued that they should be permitted to park in no-parking zones if no other spaces are available or if their hazard lights are flashing.

Mario Rocha, a disabled senior citizen who has arthritis, recently appealed a $276 ticket for parking his Dodge van in a bus zone while picking up his wife at a Los Angeles bus station.

Rocha said the porter at the bus station told him it was OK to park in the bus zone because there were no parking spaces for the disabled.

“I swear to God it’s true what I’m saying,” Rocha told Taylor.

Taylor was not swayed. He said a bus station porter cannot overrule city parking laws.

Rocha then took out a $68 check from the Social Security Administration. He said it was his only income for the month.

Taylor, a law school graduate who plans to take the bar exam in July, was unmoved. He told Rocha that he would receive his final ruling in the mail. If Rocha could not afford to pay the ticket, Taylor said, he would put him on a three-month payment plan.

“If they want to, they can put me in jail for two or three months,” Rocha said. “I still can’t pay.”

After Rocha left the office, Taylor explained why he resisted just giving the man a break. Leafing through Rocha’s file, Taylor said the bus station ticket was not Rocha’s first.

“He is parking everywhere,” Taylor said. “He is parking in the red zone, in the yellow zone. He is parking everywhere except where he is supposed to park.”

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