Watching the shameful official scofflaws scurry like cornered rats when they get caught

A Boston Globe reporter, one of several investigating the blatant abuse of handicapped parking spaces by able-bodied, uncaring cops in front of police headquarters, makes a phone call and unleashes a mass exodus from the building:

"One repeat scofflaw: the driver of a Toyota Corolla registered to Irene Landry, the city's supervisor of Parking Enforcement, who oversees the 194 parking enforcement officers who write 1.3 million tickets a year.

When a Globe reporter called Landry's office on Feb. 10 to ask about the Toyota, Landry was stunned. "I will investigate," she said. "Trust me when I tell you that."

Within five minutes of that call, her son Anthony, a police dispatcher, and three other police officials hastened out of Police Headquarters in shirtsleeves, got into their illegally parked cars, and drove away." (Emphasis mine)

Not only is Landry fils a lawbreaker, he can't even seem to afford to pay for his own transportation, instead sponging off of Mom. I wonder how he would manage to pay for the large amount of parking tickets he should have received, seeing as how each one is $120, plus a $93 charge if the car is towed?

Before anyone asks, these aren't marked cruisers on official emergency business. They are personal cars parked at the same places day after day while the owners are supposedly at work enforcing the city's laws.

The article goes on to detail the mass ignoring of parking laws in that area by police department employees (including sworn officers, who give out hundreds of tickets a day to peasants for the exact same offense), including leaving their cars in front of fire hydrants, in crosswalks, at day-care drop offs, and even at bus stops, blocking access for people who ironically don't even use parking spots.

"The only ticket books seen by the Globe over the six weeks' observation were those that officers left on the dashboards of their cars - a time-honored signal to fellow officers. Others left uniform shirts hanging in back windows."

A shameful little fringe benefit of being a "special person". Maybe the peasants should visit the local police-supply store to get their own substitute parking pass.

According to the above-mentioned Ms. Landry's boss, the parking enforcement agents don't patrol the area because police headquarters is full of people who are able to write the same tickets her employees do, which frees up the parking agents to be deployed to other areas (an excuse that actually makes sense, if the cops were holding up their end of the bargain and "policing" themselves. Which they're not.).

"Some cars, like Landry's, were regular offenders. Another frequent user of handicapped spots, David McClelland, an Emergency Medical Services dispatcher who works at Police Headquarters, acknowledged in a call he returned to a reporter that he has never been ticketed there, and said he took the risk because there is so little parking in the area."

Imagine the irony (and tragedy) if Mr. McClelland was to dispatch EMS to a call for assistance because a handicapped person had a health emergency, all because the permit holder had to walk a much greater distance because McClelland's own car was in the handicapped space they wished to use, preventing them from parking closer to their destination.

Boston residents should clip and save this article, in order to use it in court to demonstrate the blatant unequal enforcement of the traffic laws in that city, and to ask why they don't get the same consideration. Maybe some mass dismissals of tickets by judges (and the subsequent outrage by city officials over the drop in fine revenue) will embarrass the cops into playing by the same rules as everyone else.