DOR Expands Use Of Photo Evidence For Parking Tickets

It seems Chicago's Department of Revenue (DOR) has had so much success utilizing photographic evidence when ticketing parking violators, it has decided to utilize photography for for even more violations.

According to DOR management, the program was expanded the second week of February.

Ultimately, the goal of photo evidence is to discourage motorists from contesting tickets utilizing photos and encourage violators to pay sooner.

"It has been pretty successful," said Dept. of Revenue spokesman Matt Darst about the program. "But it's always been our goal to expand it (photo evidence) when we thought they (PEA's) were familiar with the technology and the (AutoCITE) device."

When the DOR first had Parking Enforcement Aides (PEA's) utilizing the new AutoCITE handheld ticket printers with photographic capabilities back in August 2008, the PEA's were instructed to use them on just four limited violations.

This included city sticker violations, residential parking permit violations, missing front or back license plates and expired registration stickers on vehicle plates.

"These four violations generally had a high contest rate or low payment rate," said Darst explaining the rationale behind using photo evidence for the initial violation types. "But we look at it as providing two things. It provides additional information with the ticket. It may provide the driver with a defense. And it supports a ticket when a PEA thinks they wrote a proper ticket."

But now, the expanded list of violations that will have photo evidence provided by Parking Enforcement Aides will include:

• Parking on a sidewalk

According to our friend and PEA Ticketmaster, PEA's are not limited to the partial list above and are instructed to use their built in camera whenever they see fit.

"Management has now instructed us to basically take photos of all violations," explains Ticketmaster. "This includes: meters, fire hydrants, bus stops, 30' from stop signs as well as everything else prior to (now)."

The only upside to this new policy is that taking photos does slow down the ticket writing according to Ticketmaster.

"Yes, taking all those photos have seriously slowed some of us down," says Ticketmaster. "The good news for the owners is that maybe we won't be able to get to their car as fast, the bad news is that these tickets will be even harder to contest."

Darst, however, doesn't agree with Ticketmaster's assessment as far as speed and feels any slow down would be nominal at best.

Only PEA's and SERCO enforcement employees carry these handheld ticketing devices and only account for about 35% of all parking tickets. Police still write the vast majority of parking tickets in Chicago.

In most cases, this photographic evidence will make it much harder for motorists to contest their tickets as photos provided by PEA's will, in most cases, help support the facts alleged on the ticket.

The key will be to view your photos online and see if the photos accurately represent the facts of the violation.

For example, is that your car and/or license plate in the photo? Do the photos prove what the written violation states? Are the photos clear enough and in focus enough to prove the violation occurred? Check the photos to see if they may prove the violation did not occur.

If you are using photo evidence to dispute a ticket, your photographs (and testimony) are going to have to overpower the photo evidence provided by the PEA's. This may be difficult, but not impossible. More and better photos may do the trick.

However, if the photos provided by the city make the ticket irrefutable, then you may just want to pay ... unless you're mentally unbalanced like me.

Check out The Expired Meter for even more information and advice about parking, fighting parking tickets and red light tickets in Chicago.