Motorists Making Tracks With Boot : Devices Used on Violators Vanish

These boots were not made for it, but parking violators have been walking off with them just the same.

Thirty-two Denver Boots--steel clamps that parking officers affix to the wheels of cars belonging to flagrant parking violators--have disappeared since the city Department of Transportation started using them in April.

The boots, clamped on about 40 cars each day, cost the city $350 each.

“We don’t necessarily know how they’re getting them off,” said Kaye Beechum, who heads the boot program for the Department of Transportation. “The assumption is that they tow (booted cars) and then work on the boot.”

5 or More Tickets

Under the 3-month-old program, parking officers clamp the orange boot on the front wheel when they discover a car registered to someone with five or more outstanding parking tickets.

The motorist must pay the overdue fines and a $35 fee to have the boot removed. If the fines are not paid in 72 hours, the cars are towed.

But on 43 occasions, the cars and the boots disappeared before they could be towed by the city, Beechum said. Although parking officers know the names of the car owners and have given them to police, only 11 of the boots have been recovered, she said.

Officials theorize that the owners tow their cars to secluded locations, then cut or pry off the boots.

Several Arrests

Several people have been arrested for stealing the boots, Beechum said. In addition, one Westside man was arrested for trying to remove his car wheel at the spot where it had been booted in hopes of slipping off the device.

But, she said, “the feeling I have is that most are trying to be more secretive about it” and move their cars.

Stealing the boot, tampering with it or towing a booted car are misdemeanors. Towing companies that aid violators also can be prosecuted, although no such cases have yet been brought.

Despite the thefts, Beechum said, the program is working.

“We feel it’s been very successful and getting better all the time,” she said. “People who are not eligible to be booted feel more likely to pay after seeing what happens to the ones who don’t.”

According to Jay Carsman, the city’s parking systems coordinator, revenue from fines is up 25% in the last four months, while the number of citations has increased only 14% over the previous year.

“There has been an overall positive impact on our rate of collections that we believe comes from the public perception,” he said. “The only thing that has changed is that we’re booting cars and more people have been paying their tickets.”

Even so, the department says that about 61,000 motorists still owe the city $27 million.

“I don’t think we’ve made a major dent in that number,” Beechum said.

5 Taken in Hermosa Beach

In Hermosa Beach, where a similar booting program has collected $223,117 since it was started in 1982, five boots have been stolen, said Mary Fehskens, technical aide to the city’s General Services Department. All five thieves have been caught and ordered to pay their citations and a $350 boot replacement fee, she said.

“We’ve had some problems,” she said. “They can smash it off if they try hard enough. It just takes a lot of work.”

If the thefts persist in the Los Angeles program, the city may try another brand of boot, Beechum said.

“As time goes by, we’ll discover methods to stop them,” she said.

But the problem was not unexpected.

“We didn’t know how or where, but we did know there would be a certain percentage” of thefts, Beechum said. “I don’t think this is a big surprise. Nothing is absolutely foolproof.”