Dear PoPville – Cop Week Parking Enforcement

“Dear PoPville,

The annual kerfuffle over general lawlessness during Cop Week has already gotten some press this week on PoP.  I thought it might be worth adding to the discussion by noting an enforcement problem on the MPD side of things.  The SeeClickFix site has received numerous complaints of foreign law enforcement parking illegally.  See e.g.,:

• Trailers blocking 15th Street
• Trailers blocking 15th Street

The back and forth between the citizens and MPD–with the complaints being repeatedly closed then reopened–that was required to get them to finally issue tickets is really something.  Enough so that it prompted me to go and look up the citations on DC’s ticket system.  Lo and behold, the tickets that were reported to close the complaints do not correspond to the license plates of the offending cars and trailers.

I was curious as to whether this is a problem of MPD trying to give our visitors “professional courtesy” or a larger issue with the SeeClickFix site.  It appears that it may be a larger issue.  See e.g.,

• Contractor’s truck parked in bike lane
• Shuttle parked in bike lane

In each case the online ticket system reports the ticket having been issued to a different license plate than is visible in the picture.  Does MPD/parking enforcement just report any random recent ticket in order to close the SeeClickFix complaints?

If you run Ticket #8127714136 through the DC ticket database, it returns a result for a MD car with license plate #2AZ1236.  But the car and trailer that were noted in the online complaint have Texas and Mass. plates (see the third Q&A in the complaint).  Another complaint was made about the same car and trailer the next day (this time only noting that the truck has Texas plates).  The ticket number supposedly issued to the truck to close that complaint, #8127269975, returns a ticket issued to another MD car, this time with license plate #8BE3378.

For the second set of links that I provided, regarding the contractor and the shuttle bus, their license plates are visible in the pictures linked to the online complaint.  However, the ticket numbers issued, as reported in the comments, are for different license plate numbers.“