Feb 12, 2009 11:04 pm US/Eastern
I-Team: Boston Gives Parking Scofflaws The Boot
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
After an I-Team investigation last fall that revealed
parking offenders owe millions to Boston, the city is taking a new approach to cracking down on drivers who are breaking parking laws.
Transportation crews have stepped up their rounds, looking for the top parking scofflaws in the city.
This comes after the I-Team traced the plates of the 30 worst offenders, by themselves owing $149,000 to the city of Boston.
At the time the city had a total of $52 million in outstanding unpaid parking tickets and fees.
"In this fiscal climate in which we find ourselves, we have to do everything within that power and within reason that we're collecting what's owed to the city of Boston," said transportation commissioner Tom Timlin. "It's a lot of revenue."
Because of that revenue and our investigation the city started watching the parking patterns of the people who don't park by the rules and refuse to pay the fines. Now they track the offenders and lock the cars in park until they pay up.
We discovered certain patterns when we looked at the city's parking data.
As a result the city took another look and found some of the scofflaws were parking in the same areas where they were ticketed in the past. Now transportation crews are armed with a list of streets and plates of the top 100 offenders, and they're ready with the boots.
Boston's Autovu truck searches the neighborhoods and city streets where they park. The truck's cameras send an alert of people with outstanding tickets -- something that can't be done by parking officers walking the beat.
In the city, Autovu scans about 800 plates per hour. If a plate comes up with five tickets or more the car is flagged, they check it and the car is booted."
"Why wasn't this done in the past?" I-Team reporter Kathy Curran asked Timlin. "Was it too difficult to do?"
"It wasn't too difficult to do, but we wanted to maximize our resources," Timlin said. "We want to send a message to the folks at the top of the list, 'you've been getting away with this for a long time, it's time to pay up.'"
Since our investigation, four of the top offenders, including Tyler Montgomery, who had 71 tickets and owed the city more than $4,500, have paid up.
Joseph Djevelikian, who denied having any tickets, paid $615, but the city says he's eligible for the boot again.
The man with the biggest bill, Boston lawyer Dan Dowcett, who is disabled and has a handicap plate, refuses to pay.
Dowcett has been hit with 190 tickets for parking illegally in loading zones, no parking zones and for double parking his car.
Since October, Dowcett has gotten more tickets and his bill has ballooned from $12,259 to $12,935.
"It is difficult because he's disabled, but the people in the disabled community will say that's no excuse, but as opposed to taking this person as one person we want to take a holistic approach and look at this as a systematic way in addressing similar problems," Timlin said.
Right now, the city doesn't boot cars with handicap plates. The registry does block parking scofflaws from renewing their license in Massachusetts, which doesn't apply to the disabled community, but some rules may change.
Since October, the city has collected almost $8 million in outstanding fees.
The city, which has a 92 percent collection rate, has collected $20,000 from the top 30 offenders since October.
It has booted 260 more cars than this time last year.
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