You won’t be able to contest a D.C. parking ticket in person if the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles has its way, reports the Examiner. DMV wants to eliminate the adjudication hearings and rely only on mail or e-mail complaints.
Why? The number of citations is expected to skyrocket.
Why? DMV will start using “street-sweeper cameras.”
WHAT??
That’s right. DC will mount cameras on its street sweepers to record parking violators, a plan first used in Chicago. San Francisco is considering mounting parking ticket cameras on municipal buses. William O. Howland, Jr., Director of the DC Department of Public Works, mentioned this use of License Plate Recognition System (LPRS) technology on page 9 of his March 14th testimony before the Council’s Committee on Public Works and the Environment.
The use of cameras and LPRS was part of Mayor Fenty’s 100-day plan and is already in use in vehicle booting and ROSA (Registration of Out-of-State Automobiles) compliance operations. Use by Parking Control Officers is next, essentially automating parking ticket writing, and the number of parking tickets, currently at 1.5 million annually, will skyrocket.
No one has publicly objected to the use of cameras so far but several people, including Council Members Jim Graham and Phil Mendelson, believe the elimination of face-to-face adjudication hearings is a violation of due process.
I respectfully suggest that DMV officials consider the District’s rate of adult functional illiteracy, said to be about 36 percent. People who read and write with difficulty are at a disadvantage when mail-in and Web-based explanations are the only options. This is not a good argument for eliminating face-to-face adjudication hearings.
Image by Mike Licht, who just parked for a minute to run into a store and get change for that meter. Honest. I think this meter is broken anyway. Can your camera get a good picture of that, too?
November 15, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Do you think that will help with any lawsuits?
November 15, 2007 at 7:56 pm
There are too many broken parking meters, and too many citizens uncomfortable with the written word, for this to work. I have successfully defended myself against some “broken meter” tickets by photographing the meters in question and testifying to the fact that they were broken when I got the ticket. I don’t believe that would have worked if I just sent in the photos. The Adjudicator needs to be face-to-face with the claimant to assess his or her veracity.