City Clears Car Dealer of Most Ticket Charges

The San Fernando Valley car dealership owned by Los Angeles Police Commissioner Bert Boeckmann has been cleared of responsibility for most of the overdue parking tickets issued to vehicles registered to the firm, city officials said.

A city review of 249 tickets totaling $11,041 concluded that most are owed by car owners who received citations after they bought their vehicles from Boeckmann’s Galpin Motors but before the ownership change was registered with the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

The city is still reviewing 72 of the 249 parking citations, worth $3,206, to see if the dealership owes the money, said Alice Lepis, the city’s principal transportation engineer.

“How many of these tickets are truly the liability of Galpin Ford is not certain at this time,” according to the two-page report compiled by the city transportation department.

Lepis acknowledged the review has dramatically reduced the amount of delinquent fines originally attributed to the dealership last month, causing embarrassment for the police commission member.

Boeckmann, who owns one of the nation’s leading Ford dealerships, said he was not surprised by the results of the city’s review and believes he won’t owe the additional amount either.

“I never thought I owed anything,” Boeckmann said. “For 43 years I’ve worked extremely hard to develop a reputation that my employees, my customers and my community could be proud of. The city and I were never in dispute.”

The dealership routinely provides the city information on drivers who lease or rent vehicles, Boeckmann said.

The transportation department is investigating the city official who sent Boeckmann a letter last month demanding payment of the fines. That official, Jay S. Carsman, acknowledged at the time he had a personal dispute with Boeckmann and his dealership over the terms of a lease arrangement made with Carsman’s son.

Carsman denied, however, that he was singling out Boeckmann.

“I did what I felt was right--not only for me but for the city,” Carsman said Tuesday. “Other people have to pay their tickets.”

City officials declined to discuss the investigation into Carsman’s conduct. “We don’t want to rush to judgment,” Lepis said.

The review of the 249 outstanding citations found that 115 tickets were written on vehicles purchased from Galpin, but change-in-ownership forms had not been filed with the DMV. Another 17 tickets had been paid, and 34 were issued to vehicles that did not belong to Galpin. The firm provided the city with the names and addresses of customers who had leased Galpin cars and had been issued 11 tickets.

Under state law, rental or leasing agencies can avoid liability for tickets if they release the names and addresses of drivers who received citations.

In a faxed letter sent to Boeckmann’s office on Aug. 22, Carsman said the dealer must pay the full amount of the delinquent tickets with a cashier’s check and that Boeckmann had lost the right to contest the citations.

But Carsman’s boss said there were serious inaccuracies in the letter and that Boeckmann had the right to contest the tickets.