Aussie parking inspectors want capsicum spray & batons
The window in my office building looks over a 3:30pm clearway. Often on a slow afternoon if a car is still left standing at around 3pm on the strip me and my co-workers start to take an interest.
A few times now and without fail at 3:30pm on the dot if a car is still standing there a guy rocks up in a white hatchback, gets out and starts writing a ticket. Immediately after he’s done a tow truck pulls up out of nowhere and another man gets out, starts taking a dozen photos of the car and then proceeds to tow it away.
We’re talking the tow truck guy arriving literally seconds after the ticket inspector has gotten into his car and all evidence that a car was even there to begin with gone by 3:35pm. You’d be naive to think this was a all just a repeated co-incidence.
by lachlansear
Upon finding one they pitch a tent and wait it out and the second it ticks over furiously start hammering out details on their little electronic ticket printers. Abuse, both mentally and physically naturally comes with the territory. Nobody likes being told ‘sorry love’ after rushing back to their car and being just a few minutes late.
The parking inspector union though, has had enough. They are demanding the public treat their members with respect and that the government train them up in self defense and equip them with capsicum spray and combat batons.
There’s definitely a problem here when people are being assaulted for doing their job but is self defence training and riot weapons going to combat the problem or simply band-aid fix it. Clearly there’s a deeper issues at play here.
A few months back I was in the city and walking back to my car with a friend. About 100m from my car I noticed a ticket inspector writing out a ticket for my car. I looked down at my watch and noted the time was 1:22pm, we’d paid my meter till 1:21pm.
I could have run up to him and done the whole begging and pleading thing but I didn’t bother. Past experience has learnt me that it simply doesn’t work. 30 seconds or 30 minutes, it’s the same to these parasitic bottom dwellers and they do not care.
You can blow your stack and yell to your black and blue, shove them to the ground, spit on them, threaten to beat the shit out of them or whatever, at the end of the day you still walk away with a ticket.
Do ticket inspectors really enjoy their jobs that much?
I doubt it. What we’re really seeing here is the ongoing effects of councils pressuring their officers to get those tickets out, whatever the cost.
Back in 2001 it was uncovered that Melbourne councils were not only setting ticket goals for their collectors, but also offering bonuses and penalties based on how many tickets were written up during the year.
What’s even more disgusting is these targets are then factored into the yearly budgets of councils. They then go from being simply paper estimates to a vital component of the council funding pool that if not delivered can leave a gaping hole in the council’s budget.
So just how much money are we talking here?
Back in 2008, Melbourne City council made thirty nine million dollars off of parking tickets alone.
As you can see we’re not talking chump change here.
So what happens when the ticket inspectors simply can’t meet their quotas? I mean if people aren’t breaking the law (as stupid as being 30 seconds too late to your meter counting as ‘breaking the law’ sounds), then there’s no tickets to issue right?
City of Melbourne chief executive David Pitchford admitted yesterday that parking officers had been over-zealous in meeting daily parking fine quotas for 10 years. He said some managers threatened officers with the sack if they didn’t each issue 30 tickets a day.
A former parking officer, employed by the City of Stonnington through contractor Tenix, also said grey ghosts were under increasing pressure to fill council coffers. The former officer said there was a “subtle but comprehensive form of bullying”.
They were threatened with a financial penalty if targets were not met.
The fines were cancelled and the official reason given was that “the parking inspector was new to the job and had misread a sign.” If a parking inspector misreads a sign what bloody hope do members of the general public have?
Unfortunately innocent mistakes are not factored into the revenue raising exercise of issuing tickets, as anyone who’s tried to argue with a ticket inspector will tell you.
So we have a culture where councils are desperately relying on a consistent stream of revenue from parking fines which by rights should be hugely variable, desperate ticket inspectors pumping out fines wherever they can, threats on parking inspectors to issue fine quotas and an angry public who are getting increasingly frustrated with the entire process.
Then to top it off you have the United Services Union demanding officers be given tools to physically fight the public with.
Arming ticket inspectors is always going to be a paltry band-aid solution to a much deeper problem. In an industry that runs on one to two hour timeframes with a thirty second error margin, no lenience and the outset that everyone is a criminal the roots of these problems have simply got to be dealt with.
A good first step would be making councils accountable to their quotas and heavy reliance on fine revenue. Parking fine revenue should compliment annual budgets as a variable surplus, not be major component of the budget.
If you can’t guarantee people are going to break the law then you shouldn’t guarantee certain parts of your budget on ticket revenue. As long as this goes on inspectors are going to get those tickets in by any means possible.
…and the union wonder why the Australian public are ready to belt ticket inspectors a new one.
November 13th, 2009 at
[...] few months back I vented my frustration citing some experiences of my own. Back then the same union calling for a change in public opinion [...]