• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Students who fraudulently use handicap placards for convenient parking are being chastised once again. But this time the criticism isn’t coming from the university.

At the annual meeting of the Holmby-Westwood Homeowners Association, L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss said he is working with the Department of Transportation to conduct “sting operations” against students who misuse handicapped placards and park in the Holmby Hills area, adjacent to Hilgard Avenue and the east side of the campus.

Weiss said the department has been conducting sweeps and issuing tickets, and will continue to monitor what he calls “an ongoing problem.”

Many of the sixty or so in attendance applauded the announcement.

“If you drive Westholme and Wyton ... you will see handicap placards on every single car,” said Sandy Brown, president of the association. “There is no reason to park on our streets unless you are visiting a resident.”

Weiss mentioned that he goes jogging through the Holmby Hills area and has noticed the abuses himself. One resident yelled out that “illegal parking is blatant ... we can’t even have guests.”

For the most part, parking on the streets of the affluent Holmby Hills are restricted to those with a resident or guest permit, which the homeowner must purchases through the Department of Transportation. But, in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, those who legitimately have handicapped placards can park on streets requiring permits.

According to the Holmby Hills newsletter, since October 2002 the Department of Transportation has cited 11 people for abusing handicapped placards.

Brown believes it is too easy to get the placards as abuses seem rampant.

“Part of the problem is the disabled community is never willing to police themselves,” Brown said. “They have to go to the DMV and see how these placards are issued; are they issuing them to people who should not have them?”

The misuse of handicapped parking placards has been a persistent problem on campus as well. In 2002, the university police cited 29 students for illegally using handicapped placards.

Fines are expensive, usually over $500.

Last year Parking Services posted signs in university parking lots encouraging those who witness misuse of the placards to make a report with a hotline set up in 2000 specifically for the problem.

However, the university has no jurisdiction off campus.

Several other topics were discussed at the meeting, ranging from traffic issues and sidewalk repair, to preventing more high-rise construction on the Wilshire corridor.

Weiss, who represents L.A. County’s 5th district, which includes Westwood, said he is also lobbying the City Council to work on ensuring Los Angeles is prepared for the threat of terrorism.

“Americans seem to have forgotten about the threat of terrorists, but the terrorists haven’t forgotten about America,” Weiss said.

Weiss did not elaborate on what preparations needed to be made nor what his recommendations are.