Driver Draws the Line : Woman Not Guilty of Wiping Off Chalk Mark to Avoid Parking Ticket

A 52-year-old real estate office manager who was arrested, handcuffed, fingerprinted and jailed earlier this year after a dispute with a Palos Verdes Estates parking enforcement officer was found not guilty Tuesday of removing a chalk mark from her car tire to avoid a parking ticket.

Rosina Baur leaped to her feet and kissed her attorney, Ray Legg, after South Bay Municipal Judge Josh Fredricks pronounced her innocent of a misdemeanor charge of interfering with a city employee.

“If you did not do something, you have to do whatever it takes to stand up for your rights,” a beaming Baur told several reporters. “If you do not defend your rights, you lose them.”

So ended the matter of the People vs. Rosina Baur, a case that became a cause celebre in Palos Verdes Estates, an affluent city that values both parking and gentility.

The Palos Verdes Estates Police Department received about 50 phone calls and letters after the April 21 arrest of Baur and a co-worker, who was also accused of erasing a chalk mark, police officials said.

Residents seemed evenly divided: Some praised the department for its efforts to free more parking at the crowded shopping center, while others called the arrests an overreaction to a minor problem.

“Nobody is in the middle,” Police Chief Gary Johansen said. “Either we are the Gestapo, or they say, ‘Right on, you did exactly the right thing.’ ”

In fact, Baur said earlier: “Anyone who knows me will vouch I have never done anything illegal. I am so pure that when they took me away a friend said, ‘They’ve arrested Snow White.’ ”

The second woman accused along with Baur, Coldwell Banker receptionist Anne Bisco, paid the $89.50 fine after admitting that she had wiped away a chalk mark on the same morning. But Baur said she was innocent and that she would fight.

Tuesday’s 3 1/2-hour trial opened with the testimony of parking enforcement Officer Kay Huber, who said she had been told before the confrontation with Baur that shopping center employees were wiping chalk marks off their tires to avoid tickets.

“I was really upset about it,” Huber testified.

So Huber said she asked patrol Officer Robert Connor to follow her to the center--a picturesque, Spanish-style building with a view of the ocean--to see if they could catch the scofflaws.

Huber said she marked the tires of all the cars in the lot, including Baur’s gray Mazda. Less than three minutes later, Baur came out of her office, leaned down near the front of her car and began rubbing the tire, Huber testified.

Connor, who took the witness stand next, said he saw the same thing from his vantage point across Palos Verdes Drive West. Connor testified that he checked the front left tire of Baur’s car and found that the chalk mark had been smeared.

When asked to identify the perpetrator, both Connor and Huber pointed to the defense table, where Baur sat demurely in a stylish blue-and-white wool suit.

But Baur took the stand as the last witness and denied that she ever wiped off the yellow chalk. Instead, she said, she drove her car around the lot and into another one-hour space, as permitted in the Palos Verdes Estates parking ordinance.

After she was handcuffed, Baur said, she tried to explain to Connor that she had moved her car and had not wiped off the chalk mark.

“He said, ‘Well, it’s my word against yours, and I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget,’ ” Baur testified.

“I tried to reason with him,” she testified. “I said that he should at least investigate. . . . I was just really shocked.”

Baur’s co-worker, Brita McGee, corroborated much of Baur’s story. McGee testified that she had just arrived to work when she saw Baur pull out of one parking space and move to another.

Attorneys for both sides agreed that the case came down to a question of whom to believe: Baur or the two officers.

Defense attorney Legg said the officers “fudged” on what they saw. Deputy Dist. Atty. Diana Teran said it was Baur who had a reason to lie--to avoid the fine.

Judge Fredricks seemed incredulous when Teran suggested that Baur might have lied.

The judge said he believed that Baur had simply moved her car and that the officers may have assumed that Baur erased the chalk mark when they saw her lean over the front of her car to look at her tire.

Baur said she intends to avoid future problems by parking on a side street.