Friday, February 23, 2001

Remember the phony Philadelphia parking tickets?

They were more frequent than foul balls at Three Rivers Stadium a few decades ago.

You'd come home from work, check the mail and there it was -- an official citation from the City of Brotherly Love telling you to pay up for improperly parking your car on a Philly street.

Never mind that you had never:

1) been in Philadelphia on the date listed on the tag.

2) been to Philadelphia in your life.

3) even heard of Philadelphia.

The phony tickets caused quite a stir at the time. They also were a hassle to deal with. It took more than a phone call to straighten things out. The best way to handle it was to send a notarized affidavit to the Philadelphia Traffic Court stating that neither you nor your car was in the city at the time of the infraction.

Although the phony Philly parking tickets appeared to be thinly veiled revenue-raisers for that city, the parking ticket Pittsburgh sent to Donald Garman of Snyder County was a mistake.

He's willing to give the nation's former Most Livable City the benefit of the doubt.

Garman, 62, a former postal clerk, lives in Mount Pleasant Mills, a small town about 40 miles north of Harrisburg.

Last November, he received a summons from the Pittsburgh Traffic Court for an alleged parking violation at 1:01 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 3 on "Montery" Street. There is no "Montery" Street in Pittsburgh. There is, however, a Monterey Street on the North Side. It's one of the Mexican War streets.

I realize the officer who wrote the ticket might have been in a hurry and Pat Sajak of "Wheel of Fortune" wasn't around to offer an "e" to correctly spell Monterey. But let's call that mistake No. 1.

Then, when the officer wrote down the license plate of the offending vehicle, Garman believes the officer may have written a "u" that someone in traffic court thought was a "v." Or, the traffic court employee may have misread one of the other letters or numbers the officer wrote on the ticket.

Let's call that mistake No. 2.

So, Garman got a ticket for "no parking street cleaning" and was directed to send $15 fine plus $27 in costs via check, money order or credit card to traffic court.

The summons notice also told him that "Failure to respond to this notice in 10 days will result in a warrant being issued for your arrest [all of the preceding words were underlined] under appropriate sections of the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure."

Although Garman's correct license plate number was typed on the summons, it identified him as the owner of a Nissan 300XZ. Garman doesn't own a Nissan 300XZ. He drives a 1984 AMC Eagle station wagon.

He said he also wasn't in Pittsburgh on Oct 3. "The last time I was in Pittsburgh was about 10 years ago," he said.

"It would appear that an error has been made by the Pittsburgh police department or your office," he wrote in a Nov. 20 letter to Traffic Court. "Please advise as to what disposition will be made out of the subject summons."

Garman sent copies of his letter to Mayor Tom Murphy, police Chief Robert W. McNeilly Jr. and Chief Magistrate William T. Simmons.

When no one got back to him by Dec. 18, he wrote a letter to Murphy and asked that someone respond by Dec. 25 or he would plead his case in a letter to the editor of the Post-Gazette. No one did. Post-Gazette Editor John G. Craig Jr. received Garman's letter early last month. It was forwarded to me.

In his letter to the Post-Gazette and in a telephone interview, Garman repeatedly acknowledged that the parking ticket was a minor issue. But he emphasized that motorists in his situation "deserve better treatment."

He's right.

He also thinks the city should have compared the description of the vehicle on the ticket with the license plate number.

He's right there, too.

I called Deputy Mayor Sal Sirabella. "I'll look into it," he said.

He did.

In a Jan. 9 letter to Garman, Sirabella said he had been unable to find the Nov. 20 letter Garman sent to the mayor's office. He also said he had forwarded Garman's Dec. 18 letter to the mayor to Simmons "for further review and follow-through."

On Feb. 2, Simmons sent Garman a letter in which he said his staff couldn't find his Nov. 20 letter.

However, based on the information Garman provided in his Dec. 18 letter to Murphy, Simmons said he had directed his Traffic Court supervisor "to dismiss the summons that was issued against you. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you, and trust that this resolution is satisfactory."

"I'm satisfied," Garman said.

He thanked me for my interest and assistance and I thanked him for his persistence and insistence that the city acknowledge and correct its mistake.

My thanks to Sirabella and Simmons for their help.

Lawrence Walsh can be reached at 412-263-1895. His e-mail address is lwalsh@post-gazette.com.