IG: Washington DC’s parking tickets, speed cameras are the worst

A senior District of Columbia official boasted that his city’s parking enforcement is as powerful as the IRS, one of the many details revealed by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) in a new audit.

D.C. collected $171.7 million in parking fines and speeding-camera tickets in 2013, according to the audit, released Monday. The OIG found numerous problems with the city’s speeding-cameras, including workers who randomly issue tickets without proper evidence.

“One of the beauties of parking, it’s like the [Internal Revenue Service],” one senior official told the OIG. “If you get a parking ticket, you are guilty until you have proven yourself innocent. … That has worked well for us.”

“The attitude behind this twist on accepted jurisprudence—that the burden of proof rests with the ticketed motorist—is also seen in a number of the key findings of this report,” the OIG said.

The report noted that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) issues tickets “even in those instances when it cannot conclusively identify the speeding vehicle” in images depicting multiple automobiles.

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