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Sunday, June 16, 2002

By Joe Smydo, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

William D. Chrisner III said he has ventured Downtown more than once over the years to accept a City Council proclamation for "barrier awareness week," only to encounter an obstacle at the City-County Building -- police cars and public works trucks occupying the handy parking spaces reserved for the disabled.

Chrisner's driver circled Grant Street, looking for another spot.

The Americans With Disabilities Act, enacted in 1990, requires stores, restaurants and government buildings be made accessible to people with disabilities. But the disabled say their hard-won freedom is infringed daily by the able-bodied motorist who takes a parking space marked by the familiar stick figure in a wheelchair.

"You don't understand until you need it," said Chrisner, who has a vision impairment and is president and executive director of Three Rivers Center for Independent Living, a disability rights group and service agency in Wilkinsburg.

Disabled people said authorities don't do enough to enforce proper use of the spaces, and they're especially offended when police officers or other public servants use them as a convenience.

"We look to our law enforcement to enforce the law, not break it," said Laura Glozier, an employee of Tri-County Patriots for Independent Living, in Washington, Pa.

Calling themselves Citizens Wanting Accessibility, about 20 employees and clients of Tri-County Patriots traveled to Burgettstown early this month to question borough council about a photograph a resident took in March.

The photo showed one of the town's police cars in the borough building parking lot, in a space near the door reserved for the disabled. The group demanded the officer be fined, just as a civilian who would use the space illegally.

Lt. George Roberts, the department's ranking officer, declined to be interviewed. Borough solicitor Robert N. Clarke said the officer needed a convenient place to park while removing a prisoner from the car, and didn't move it afterward.

"He just forgot it was there," Clarke said.

The activists said the car remained in the space at least 24 hours. The officer wasn't fined, but the group received an apology from council President Richard Alvarez.

Group members said they planned to carry cameras so they could photograph any official vehicles they saw using the spaces in other communities. Glozier said activists also would send letters to local police departments to request that officers refrain from using the spots, some of which provide extra room for vans equipped with wheelchair lifts.

The activists have an ally in Pittsburgh police Chief Robert W. McNeilly Jr., who said use of the spaces by people who aren't disabled is "reprehensible."

The spaces aren't special treatment but a way of ensuring the disabled have the same access to public places as everybody else, Chrisner said.

Federal regulations specify the number of spaces that must be reserved for the disabled -- four in a lot with 100 parking stalls, for example. Shoppers sometimes complain there are more reserved spaces than necessary, and some small businesses balk at reserving even one space, said Joan Stein, president and chief executive officer of Accessibility Development Associates Inc., a Downtown firm that advises businesses and government on the ADA.

The spaces are reserved not only for people in wheelchairs, but also those using canes, walkers and portable oxygen and those with "hidden" disabilities such as heart ailments. To use the spaces, a person must have a special license plate or placard, issued by the state Department of Transportation with the consent of the applicant's doctor or a police officer.

About 135,000 disability plates and 563,000 placards are used statewide, according to PennDOT.

While need for parking spaces has increased since passage of the ADA, reserved spots often are taken by able-bodied motorists who think it's all right to borrow them for the few minutes it takes to fetch a gallon of milk, activists said.

Edward DesLauriers, a paralyzed Vietnam veteran who lives in Lower Burrell, said he could go to a local grocery store "any time, day or night, and find somebody in violation."

"It's worse than ever," he said.

Vigorous enforcement would not only keep parking spaces free for those entitled to use them but help fund an in-home care program for the disabled.

Each violation carries a fine of $50 to $200 that goes to the municipality where the offense occurred and a second fine of $50 that's shared, in a 5 percent-to-95 percent ratio, by the municipality and the state Department of Public Welfare. The department, which provides the in-home care, received $103,000 from the fines in the last fiscal year.

But busy police departments don't have time to patrol for scofflaws at shopping centers.

Police departments statewide, except those in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, cited 6,672 people for the offense last year, according to the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. Pittsburgh Traffic Court couldn't say how many citations city police issued.

In some areas, the disabled help with enforcement, something expressly permitted them under state law.

The Center for Independent Living of North Central Pennsylvania operates a parking patrol in seven counties. Volunteers leave statements on offending vehicles, take photographs and forward license plate numbers to police, who issue citations, said Renee Sluzalis, the center's disability-rights advocate.

DesLauriers said a similar program in Lower Burrell ended in 1999 or 2000 after a couple of years' operation. He attributed the program's demise to the indifference of city officials and an overzealous volunteer, who thought "he was a cop" and got into confrontations with motorists.

The subject of reserved parking for disabled people is one that can make tempers flare.

Keith Klink of Beaver Falls said he once saw a police officer from another Beaver County town park in a space reserved for the disabled. When he asked the officer's partner to issue a citation, Klink's request was rebuffed.

While insensitivity is a reason many able-bodied civilians use the spaces, Chrisner said he thinks arrogance is involved when the violators are police officers. But the badge isn't always a protection.

McNeilly said Pittsburgh officers face fines and disciplinary action for using the spaces, except in emergencies. Even then, he said, "every effort should be made" to park elsewhere.

State and Allegheny County police said their officers were forbidden to use the spaces, too.

While disabled people are on the lookout for violators, they're sometimes under the microscope themselves. And a quick look doesn't always tell the full story.

Stein told the story of a woman with a heart or lung condition who parked in a reserved space at a local college and was questioned by a groundskeeper, who didn't think she qualified for the special parking tag.

"You don't look handicapped," he said. "Funny," the woman replied, "you don't look like my doctor."