Handicapped Parking

* As a person who legitimately holds a disability placard, I read your Sept. 23 article, “Patrol Targets Abuse of Handicapped Parking,” with interest. The article states that “1 million placards have been issued. About 2.5 million California residents are classified as disabled.” This indicates to me that, although some do obtain them without being handicapped, for the most part, people are not obtaining them under false pretenses.

To spend the time and money on policing this is wasteful, especially with more serious and harmful crimes being neglected due to insufficient manpower. The article reveals the true motives of the police force when it reports that most of the policing is done at the meters, especially the expensive ones--areas where the city makes money from parking fees.

Where are the police at the local market, where it is important for the disabled to be able to use the free disabled parking? If those spaces are taken, that is a real “everyday struggle” for the handicapped.

MICHAEL TURNER

Long Beach

* Let us look beyond our sense of moral outrage at unlawful use of handicapped parking placards. Laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act created the situation in the first place. The larger issue is why parking spaces, or any building improvements, should be reserved for the exclusive use of any one segment of society. A law that takes something away from someone and gives it to someone else violates the basic principles on which this great nation was built.

So-called handicapped laws exempt the disabled from most parking laws. No wonder the system is fraught with abuse. Why should anyone get free or reserved parking solely because they are disabled?

This tendency to hand out irrelevant entitlements is unfair to the 98% of the public that is not disabled. In fact, it is reverse discrimination.

RICHARD DEIGHT

Buena Park