Should They Obey the Laws They Enforce?

On April 12, Gossips reported an incident witnessed by a reader on Warren Street: a parking enforcement officer being told by an officer in a police car to remove a ticket from a vehicle that was illegally parked and parked at an expired meter because the vehicle belonged to a fellow officer. At Monday's Police Committee meeting, Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward) brought up the issue, making the point that "it sends a terrible message to the rest of the community that the laws only have to be obeyed by some of us." 

Tom Casey has a report about the meeting in today's Register-Star: "Who should have privileged parking?" Judging from Casey's account, the experience Friedman described at the meeting was an amalgam of two incidents originally reported on Gossips--one in a post, the other in a comment from a reader, both experienced by Warren Street merchants. One detail underreports what actually happened. The merchant was "pissed," as Friedman put it, not because an unmarked police car remained parked in front of his place of business for eight hours but because it stayed there for eight DAYS. 

Neither HPD Chief Ellis Richardson nor Police Commissioner Gary Graziano was present at the meeting, so there was no immediate response from the police department, but Graziano is reported to have said that the problem had been brought to his attention and he would address it at the next Police Committee meeting.