Tricks and Tips

Many times a person will resort to chicanery to try to fool us. After all who wants to get a ticket if they can avoid it by whatever means necessary? Some of the ways people attempt to fake us out will be discussed here. But rest assured we’re on to all of these methods.


1) Rolling the tires. Marking a tire let's us know whether you have moved your vehicle before the allotted time on the sign expires (10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours! This is getting ridiculous!). If you wipe the mark off, that’s a big no-no for which, if you are caught, you’ll have to go to court. If you roll your car forward or backward to conceal the mark, we will see it. We will crawl on all fours if we have to to find that damned mark. Then again, sometimes we mark the tires in a different way. And no, I’m not telling you what that way is. Nyah

2) Leaving an old ticket envelope on the windshield. Some people think that if they leave the envelope on their windshield from the ticket they got last week that we are so lazy we won’t get out of our vehicles to check. Well, some of my colleagues might not – they ARE incredibly lazy – but I will! If the ticket looks faded, dirty, wrinkled, wet or any other way that makes it appear not so fresh (you know the feeling, don’t you?), we will look to see if you are trying to scam us. Recently, I opened an envelope only to find not a ticket in there but an old, blackened banana peel. How bizarre, I thought. Perhaps the person was trying to cultivate a large, black cloud of fruit flies that would attack me the minute I disturbed their resting place. Who knows? It didn’t work by the way. I gave them a new ticket. How I chuckled.

3) Notes. People will leave us notes of varying types: “Car won’t start,” “Battery Dead,” “Can’t move it – tow truck coming today.” Or simply “Please don’t ticket” P-shaw. We know you are either too lazy to get up and move it or you were too lazy (or drunk) last night to try and find a better spot that wasn’t in the sweeper zone. Maybe you’re off visiting Grandma in another state (and frankly, I don’t care what state your grandmother is in). When several vehicles mysteriously have dead batteries on the same street on sweeper day, we get awfully suspicious. It’s worse than being back in elementary school. “Little Johnny can’t move his car today. He’s sick. Signed Little Johnny’s Mother.”

If only I had a portable car crusher….

Ten-Seven