School Parking Scofflaws Caught on Tape

Michelle Nealy was dropping off her 11-year-old son at John Burroughs Middle School in Los Angeles a few months ago when she noticed two adults operating video cameras from the nearby sidewalks.

“My first response was: Why are these people videotaping these kids?” she said.

A few weeks later, when Nealy received two parking tickets in the mail, she realized the cameras were not trained on the children.

The cameras, wielded by Los Angeles parking officers, were collecting evidence against Nealy and other motorists who were dropping children off at the school.

One of the cameras got unflattering images of Nealy illegally stopping in a red zone and later blocking a driveway. “I was very upset,” Nealy said, fuming.

She is not alone.

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s video crackdown is one of the city’s fastest-growing parking enforcement programs, expanding from eight schools at its inception in 1998 to 85 schools today.

Last year, the city’s 12 camera-wielding officers produced 18,900 citations, generating nearly $700,000 in fines for the city’s coffers. City transportation officials hope to add four cameras and several more officers in the next few months.

The program’s growth has been spurred by the demands of school administrators, who face ever-increasing traffic and parking problems at the start and end of each school day.

Most students in the Los Angeles Unified School District already ride to school with mom or dad. The parking problems grew worse in April as even more parents drove students to school during the bus drivers’ strike.

The chaotic scene at the start and end of each school day can have deadly results.

In March, two young girls were killed outside an Anaheim school when a car jumped a curb and crushed them against a wall near a congested pickup and drop-off zone.

City officials hope the video enforcement program will help minimize such deaths in the future.

“Every study will tell you that if you don’t enforce the laws, you won’t get the level of compliance that you need to keep people safe,” said Philip Recht, a Los Angeles city transportation commissioner.

In the past when school administrators and parking officers tried to confront parents about illegal parking, tempers would flare and ugly altercations would erupt within earshot of schoolchildren.

The video program claims several advantages: Most violators don’t know they have been cited until weeks later, thus eliminating many face-to-face confrontations. The videotape evidence is nearly irrefutable. Plus, a single video camera can document dozens of violations in the time it takes a parking officer to write up a single citation by hand.

But many parents who have been caught on the candid cameras aren’t smiling. Instead of handing out tickets, these parents suggest that city and school officials build driveways and loading zones to make it easier for them to deliver children to and from school.

“What we need in front of the school is a place to drop the kids off,” said Alan Ehrlich, who has been cited twice by the camera-toting officers while taking his son to Hale Middle School in Woodland Hills.

Officials at that school say they have studied the parking problem, but don’t have the money or real estate to make the needed fixes.

“It’s been a concern of ours as well,” said Assistant Principal Larry Meyer. “But there is nothing we can do.”

The front entrance of Hale Middle School faces Califas Street, a narrow, two-lane residential road.

On a recent Tuesday morning, the scene in front of the school made a three-ring circus look orderly. Minivans, sedans, station wagons and SUVs were bumper to bumper, filling the street in both directions for several blocks. Children darted in between traffic, racing to beat the school’s opening bell.

Standing on opposite sides of the street, Frances Rivera, a 15-year veteran parking officer, and Tony Yancey, a six-year veteran, scanned the chaotic scene with handheld video cameras.

For the two officers, catching parking scofflaws was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Rivera turned her camera to a Volvo that stopped in a bus loading zone to deliver two youngsters to school. A few seconds later, a Ford Expedition and a BMW pulled into the same bus zone to unload students.

Rivera then swung her camera around to a Buick that had just stopped at a red curb to let out a young girl. Seconds later, she trained the camera on a Chevrolet pickup truck that pulled in front of a driveway to let two children out. Both ran across the busy street only a few yards from a marked crosswalk.

A few seconds later, a woman in a Toyota Camry pulled in front of the same driveway to drop off a young girl. As the car pulled away from the curb, the driver spotted Rivera aiming the camera in her direction.

“Did you get a picture of me?” the Camry driver asked through an opened passenger window.

Rivera nodded.

“Why?” the woman asked.

“You can’t block the driveway, ma’am,” Rivera responded.

The woman shrugged and drove off, perhaps resigned to the fact that she had been caught on tape in the act.

But other parents have not given in so easily.

Yancey said he has been the target of curses and rude gestures hurled by parents whose misdeeds were captured on camera.

“I was at Riverside Drive Elementary [in Sherman Oaks] last week and this woman was cursing me out with her kids right there in the car,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Nealy, an auditor from Los Angeles, never refuted that she had parked illegally in front of her son’s school in December.

Instead, she appealed her parking tickets by questioning the legality of the program.

In her appeal, Nealy noted that state law requires local officials to post signs that warn motorists when cameras are used to catch motorists who fail to stop at red lights.

Legal experts say parking officials who want to use video cameras to catch scofflaws are not required to post warning signs.

In fact, there are no legal procedures required for the use of cameras for this type of traffic enforcement, they say.

“I don’t think there is a constitutional problem,” said Eugene Volokh, a constitutional law professor at UCLA.

Still, city officials said they warn parents by sending notices home with students. Nealy claims she never received a notice and objects to anyone relying on schoolchildren to deliver such warnings.

Nealy won her appeal--on a technicality. An adjudication officer waived her citations because a parking officer had included inaccurate information about Nealy’s car registration.

Nealy suspects her tickets were forgiven to keep her quiet.

But she said she won’t keep quiet. Nealy complains that the program has generated plenty of money for the city, but has not changed the chaotic parking scene at her son’s school.

“If you come by the school now,” she said, “the same thing is still happening.”

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