Misuse of Disabled Placards Alleged

Those trying to find a place to park in upscale Brentwood often feel handicapped: Too many cars always seem to be competing for too few parking spaces outside gourmet coffee outlets and glitzy boutiques.

Motorists on San Vicente Boulevard have had a reason to feel that way, authorities said Friday.

Department of Motor Vehicles investigators said they have observed valet parking attendants used by one of the Westside’s trendiest restaurants displaying unauthorized handicapped parking placards to get convenient--and free--parking for customers’ cars.

After watching valets outside the Toscana restaurant stick blue placards in a Porsche and a BMW, state agents nabbed a parking attendant who had pulled a handicapped sign from beneath his shirt and slapped it on the dash of a Mercedes, said Cmdr. Vito Scattaglia of the DMV.

Seventeen DMV investigators took part in the surveillance operation last week after a businesswoman noticed that cars with handicapped placards seemed to be taking up many of the parking spots in the neighborhood.

Investigators said the scam taking place outside Toscana is the first they have discovered involving Los Angeles’ huge army of valet parking attendants. But they said it probably won’t be the last.

“It’s causing us some concern. If one is doing it, you can assume others are too,” said Scattaglia, area commander for the DMV’s Bureau of Investigations. “This should be a warning to other valets.”

The parking attendant was caught half a block from Toscana after he returned to retrieve the Mercedes and allegedly handed the bogus handicapped permit out the window to a valet waiting to move a second car into the parking spot, authorities said Friday.

Fraudulent use of a handicapped permit is a misdemeanor that can lead to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Officials of Los Angeles Parking Service, the company that supplies valet parking attendants for Toscana, did not return calls Friday. But restaurant operators expressed shock.

“We’ve never had any problems with valet parking. We’ve used the same company for eight years,” said Michele Riviello, a Toscana manager. “But we know there’s a problem in the neighborhood with parking. We know people have been fighting over parking space.”

DMV officials ordered the Brentwood investigation after an advertising executive who works in the area became suspicious over a proliferation of handicapped placards on the street.

“I walk to work, and over the last four months I started noticing all of these parked cars with them,” said Samantha Greenberg, a partner in a family-run ad agency.

Eventually, Greenberg started keeping count. When she tallied 15 during one day, she grabbed her video camera and started taking pictures.

That’s when Greenberg says she spied valets parking cars without putting money in the meters. When she told Los Angeles police what she had seen, they urged her to contact DMV officials in Sacramento.

DMV investigator Neil Frerichs said undercover agents conducted several surveillance operations near the restaurant.

“One of our investigators observed two valets for Toscana park a Porsche 911 on San Vicente, and as one employee got out he was met by a second employee who removed a blue placard from underneath his shirt and handed it to the other, who then placed it on the dash,” Frerichs said.

On another occasion, investigators watched as a valet used the same technique to park a new BMW, Frerichs said. Other valets, meantime, were parking cars and putting money in the meters.

Investigators said the placard seized as evidence from the valet in the Mercedes was traced to a 90-year-old Brentwood-area woman. She had reported to the DMV that it had been lost during a dinner visit to Toscana with family members, according to investigator Anthony Cox.

After the valet was caught, investigators did not observe any other placards being used by restaurant parking attendants. But two other drivers on the block--including a deliveryman for an area flower shop--were caught illegally using handicapped permits, Cox said Friday.

Scattaglia said the DMV will ask the Los Angeles city attorney’s office to file charges against all three next week. Because of the manpower required, local DMV investigators only conduct three or four large-scale investigations of improper use of handicapped permits annually, he said.

Other recent raids have taken place at UCLA and Santa Monica City College, he said. At the Westwood campus, investigators discovered that half the spaces in a pay-to-park structure near Pauley Pavilion were taken up by cars parking for free with handicapped placards. And half of those placards were being illegally used, Scattaglia said.

Back in Brentwood, , parking congestion was reported to be easing Friday. Greenberg said a lunchtime survey of the block only turned up three handicapped parking placards.

At Toscana, restaurant employees were standing behind their valets--praising the parking attendants as honest and hard-working.

“I’ve seen these guys sprinting five blocks to park cars on 120-degree days,” said Mark Galasso, a Toscana waiter for eight years.

Valet Jorge Gomez, who started working there in 1992, said the 70-seat restaurant at San Vicente and Darlington Avenue has enough parking in its building garage “when the place is slow.”

But he acknowledged that things get hectic when business is brisk. “It’s a tough corner,” Gomez said.