“Getting cussed out comes with the job”: Ten parking enforcement officers share their on-the-job horror stories
“Getting cussed out comes with the job”: Ten parking enforcement officers share their on-the-job horror stories
John Tory’s “zero tolerance” policy on illegal parking during rush hour has a lot of Torontonians seeing red—or, rather, yellow, on their windshields, in the form of parking tickets. The ones who absorb all that misplaced commuter rage are Toronto’s parking enforcement officers, civilian employees of the Toronto Police Service. They’re not police officers, but the work still has its hazards: they’re often abused, verbally and sometimes physically, just for doing their jobs. Here, 10 enforcement officers talk about their worst experiences on the street.
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- <strong>Carol Raymond, 57</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 3 years<br /> <br /> "One of the worst things I’ve heard is, 'You’re going to get cancer.' And I looked at him and I said, 'Whoa, I’m sorry that you feel that way.' And I just walked away."
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- <strong>Khatera Karim, 37</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 13 years<br /> <br /> "I had one lady who threatened to take her shoe off and hit me with it, which was at first very comical for me, until she took her shoe off. I think it was her husband who came out of the store and calmed her down. That was the weirdest reaction I’ve ever seen."
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- <strong>Craig Breen, 33</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 4 years<br /> <br /> "I’ve had a few assaults that were very minor, just somebody taking a swipe at me out of frustration. More recently someone threw a milkshake onto the windshield of my car. A cola or something like that, the windshield wipers would have taken care of it. But a milkshake is all sticky."
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- <strong>Angelo Franceschinis, 46</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 22 years<br /> <br /> "About three years ago I approached a vehicle on Elmhurst Avenue. A lot of people think that we have to ask you to move first. We don't, but in this situation I gave the driver in a large SUV that courtesy. He became verbally abusive, telling me I had no right to tell him to move. He eventually did, but he parked in a live lane of traffic. So I pulled up beside him on my bicycle and asked him to move once more. He refused and he made a gesture that he wanted to run into me. Then he actually made the move to do just that. He put a bit of a scare into me."
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- <strong>Michael Wong, 56</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 25 years<br /> <br /> "About a year and a half ago, a driver actually assaulted me. He had parked in front of a fire hydrant on Yonge Street. I backed off because I knew he was getting really peeved. I misjudged his reach and he managed to push me hard on my right shoulder. Eventually he got charged, but the prosecutor didn’t want to go through the courts. They managed to get him to apologize and that was the end of it."
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- <strong>Nebosja Kostic, 48</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 11 years<br /> <br /> "People react even without getting a ticket. Maybe they are tired or upset for some other reason, so when an officer approaches them to move their car they explode. It just depends. Everyone has a different threshold."
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- <strong>Gavin Da Silva, 51</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 13 years<br /> <br /> "I’ve had two people push me, and as soon as you touch me that’s assaulting an officer and that’s a problem. They’re more upset with themselves, but they take it out on me. I feel bad ticketing cars, especially around the hospitals. Sometimes you see mothers coming out of Sick Kids—that’s where the officer discretion comes into play."
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- <strong>Candace McIntosh, 30</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 1 year, 4 months<br /> <br /> "Getting cussed out comes with the job. But generally people have been pretty good to me—I think maybe because I’m small."
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- <strong>Ted Vega, 41</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 15 years<br /> <br /> "About four years ago I gave a ticket to an unattended vehicle in Kensington Market. I was already sitting in my car when the driver came out. He starts mouthing off obscenities. As he’s walking away, he spits inside the car. So I get out and he sees me. Now he’s yelling, 'What are you going to do to me? You going to hit me?' But I wasn’t going to do anything; I just wanted to check where he got me and clean myself off. He had to apologize in front of the court for his behaviour and serve some community service hours. And all of that just for a $30 ticket."
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- <strong>Lesley French, 40</strong><br /> <strong>On the job for:</strong> 17 years<br /> <br /> "Sometimes it’s quite funny what people say. It makes me laugh. I mean, I’ve heard it all. But some people are really nice. Someone once yelled out their car window to thank me for what I’m doing."
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John Tory's “zero tolerance” policy on illegal parking during rush hour has a lot of Torontonians seeing red—or, rather, yellow, on their windshields, in the form of parking tickets. The ones who absorb all that misplaced commuter rage are Toronto's parking enforcement officers, civilian employees of the Toronto Police Service. They're not police officers, but the work still has its hazards: they're often abused, verbally and sometimes physically, just for doing their jobs. Here, 10 enforcement officers talk about their worst experiences on the street.
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What kind of dick do you have to be to yell at, or worse, a Parking Enforcement Officer? The rules are clearly set out, if you disagree with the ticket the option to fight it is clearly set out. Heck, now I think you can fight them via email.
I thank these people for doing their job. Traffic in Toronto is ridiculous at best.
Ticketing people who park illegally helps to prevent/deter more offenders. Illegally
parked vehicles are one of the reasons traffic is such a problem especially during rush
hour.
So many of the offenders are not caught. The ones that clearly deserve it. If we REALLY want to get at the core issue of defeating our Goliath of a traffic problem we need to look a little further, past just ticketing a few cars.
And while your observation is noted and agreed with, you clearly fall short of a suggest as to what can be done. So why simply state the obvious and not offer a solution or at least an idea of how to improve it?