Last month, the Boston Globe detailed widespread parking violations by officers outside Boston police headquarters. Officials declared the violations, including the routine use of handicapped-designated parking, “unacceptable,” and vowed a crackdown. The crackdown is yet to happen, the Globe says. Employees regularly leave their private cars and unmarked police vehicles in 11 spaces marked for the handicapped and in other tow zones outside headquarters. The Globe saw no evidence that violators are being ticketed.
Myra Berloff, director of the Massachusetts Office on Disability, was saddened to learn that police have done little to solve the problem. “Simply saying they’re out fighting crime doesn’t give them carte blanche to break the law,” she said. Jeffrey Conley of the Boston Finance Commission, a state-appointed watchdog agency, said Boston police officers know they are immune from parking tickets no matter where they go in Boston. “Even if they are out for dinner,” he said, “they put their ticket books or other police identifiers on car dashboards, and they know they won’t be ticketed.”