Lorain's parking ticket problem

Policing should be about serving and protecting the public, not generating profit. Unfortunately, a good many Lorain officials who should have known better appear to have forgotten that when it came to the city's aggressive enforcement of parking regulations, including one that makes it a crime to park on city streets more than a foot from the curb. Tickets are "a moneymaker, so we enforce tickets," Lorain Municipal Court Judge Mark Mihok told the Marshall Project for a story we published in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom last month. Moreover, Mihok said he felt pressured by City Council and the administration to generate revenue. However much the city might need revenue, it shouldn't be trying to balance its budget through the Police Department and the courts. As the story noted, of the 10 biggest cities in Ohio, Lorain was the only one that considered parking tickets, often issued by auxiliary police officers, a criminal offense. The other cities classify them as civil infractions, which is far more reasonable. Yes, there are good reasons for enforcing parking statutes, especially against illegally parking in a handicapped spot. However, most people wouldn't expect that a parking ticket would result in anything more than a fine and perhaps a payment to get their car out of an impound lot if it was towed for a particularly egregious violation. Another problem was the tickets contained language that said the auxiliary officers had personally handed the tickets to the alleged violators. Most of the time, though, they were placed on the windshield. Even Lorain Police Chief Michael Failing acknowledged that paperwork issue about how tickets were delivered would be justification for dismissing them, which Lorain judges began doing after reporters started poking around. The reporting found as well that the city wasn't just collecting fines. It also increased the punishment that alleged parking scofflaws faced if they didn't pay the $50 fine within 72 hours of the ticket being written. If the ticket wasn't paid by then, the fine climbed to $100. Additionally, if the ticket wasn't paid in the 72-hour window, the alleged violators were supposed to be sent an order to appear in court. Those notifications weren't going out because of confusion in the court. Mihok said he wasn't aware of the notification requirement, and a representative from Clerk of Courts Ted Kalo's office said its employees were never told to send the notifications. When the alleged violators failed to show up to court and hadn't paid their fines, the judges would suspend their driver's licenses. It's awfully hard to get around Northeast Ohio without a car, so it's a penalty that can complicate people's lives. That's in part because driving on a suspended license is a crime that carries with it additional penalties. Beyond that, getting a license suspension lifted requires time and money that people could better spend elsewhere. As the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, which is working to help those impacted by the city's shady ticketing practices, pointed out, a driver's license suspension can impact people's housing, work and financial stability. Even Failing recognized the absurdity of someone losing his or her driver's license over a parking ticket, although he said it was up to the courts to resolve the issue. That will take a lot of work. Court records showed that rather than being a rare occurrence affecting a handful of people, it was a troubling pattern. The Marshall Project reported that over the past year, Lorain officers issued 1,155 parking citations and 303 license suspensions were handed down. Some folks didn't even know their licenses had been suspended. We suspect that most people wouldn't assume that they had to show up in court for a parking ticket or that their driving privileges could be revoked if they failed to do so. Lorain residents, whether or not they've run afoul of the overzealous crackdown on parking violations, should be angry that the city appears to have put making money over common sense. After those issues were brought up last month, Mayor Jack Bradley suspended the city's aggressive ticket-writing campaign, saying a review was necessary to make certain the city was "following the law fairly for our citizens." Too bad that wasn't the priority before. If Bradley and other Lorain officials are serious about fixing the problems uncovered by the Marshall Project, a good place to start would be reversing driver's license suspensions spawned by parking violations and reimbursing drivers who already took the time and expense to get reinstated themselves. Additionally, the city should make parking tickets civil rather than criminal infractions and eliminate the authority of judges to suspend driver's licenses over parking tickets. Judges also shouldn't be able to haul people into court just because they haven't paid their parking tickets within three days. Such changes would likely make parking tickets far less lucrative for the city, but revenue enhancement never should have been a consideration in the first place.