Seattle Parking Enforcement Corruption
More Seattle Parking Enforcement Officer Corruption (PEO), Seattle Parking Enforcement Corruption, Seattle
Police Corruption, Seattle City Mayor Corruption, King County Corruption, Dishonesty, Dishonor, MalfeasanceThis editorial web page details our opinions of and experiences with:
The City of Seattle
Parking Enforcement Officer (PEO)
Corruption and Selective Enforcement
DOCUMENTED
The Seattle City Government is corrupt, and that's a fact, but perhaps the worst offender within the Seattle City government is its parking enforcement department, a division of the Seattle police department. SPD is famous enough for incompetence, unprofessionalism, and downright corruption, but its parking enforcement officers (PEOs) are legendary. With Seattle's PEOs on the job, who needs muggers?
In 2008 a vehicle in north Seattle was cited for "parking on a planting strip". The fact of the matter, as though those pesky, inconvenient things called facts had any bearing in this matter, is that the vehicle was not parked on the planting strip at all, but rather on the curb. People in this area do that out of a (possibly misguided) sense of courtesy to those who would traverse these narrow, poorly designed residential streets, and they do it also out of a sense of self-preservation. After all, the government won't take any real or significant steps to make sure anyone can ACTUALLY, COMPETENTLY, DRIVE A MOTOR VEHICLE, so those of us who can, must take extra steps to protect ourselves from the people who can't. To that end, we try to leave plenty of room for bad drivers to get by us without hitting our cars. Those of us with folding mirrors even retract them at night in the hope of still having them the following day. The streets of Seattle are, after all, a scene of complete and utter chaos. To try to protect one's property when law enforcement won't is a simple concept. But the city of Seattle isn't able to grasp that concept and leave well enough alone. The government steadfastly refuses to incorporate a testing procedure within the DMV to screen out bad drivers, but it also steadfastly refuses to allow us to take little precautions to protect ourselves from them -- like parking on the curb so as to allow bad drivers more room to get by us on narrow streets.
In any case, the vehicle was cited for parking illegally. In the City of Seattle, it's illegal to park on a planting strip (that space between the sidewalk and the street), and also to park on the curb. The RCWs make no mention of curbs, but SMC 11.58.250 makes it so.
And so be it. The driver didn't know it was illegal to park in a courteous manner. He knows it now. He paid the $35 fine. End of story.
But not quite.
At the very moment that vehicle was cited, it was surrounded by vehicles who were parked both on the planting strip and on the curb. One of those vehicles is owned by a Seattle City cop. That vehicle wasn't cited. How curious! How could it be that a private citizen was cited, yet a Seattle city employee's vehicle, one car length away, wasn't cited for the same thing? Several of us on the block began to ponder the discrepancy.
All other offenders in the area were eventually cited, but one vehicle has never been ticketed, even though it has remained parked on the curb for MANY YEARS.
We began advising SPD of the other, unpunished curb-parker, the Seattle city employee's car that was also illegally parked, to see if they'd send someone back to cite him. We were especially curious to see what hoops they'd jump through to avoid citing "one of their own". When we received no responses to emails sent to the city (imagine our surprise), we advised the city of the problem via registered mail, because the city has a long and colorful history of "losing" letters and complaints it doesn't like, then claiming they never received said complaints. Registered mail, of course, provides proof of delivery. The first such notification was signed for on 9-13-08, as shown below..
We continued to document the illegal parking via photographs, and we continued to send them to SPD and the Mayor's office, along with instructions as to how to view them on this web page. We expected no replies, or, at most, meaningless and rhetorical replies.
8-27-08
Obviously Seattle's corrupt parking enforcement has no intention of following up on our complaints and doing it's job. Seattle is as corrupt a city as we've ever seen. Most city governments will risk corruption for big gains and big powers, and Seattle is no different. The thing that amazes us, however, is that Seattle will sell its soul and its credibility for things as petty as this. The Seattle city government simply doesn't care who knows it's corrupt. After all, what's anyone going to do about it? Expose it? What good would that do? This website exposes it, yet the problem hasn't been addressed.
The proper venue for handling corruption in any city law enforcement agency is to file a complaint with the county Sheriff. Unfortunately, the King County Sheriff is documentably more corrupt than Seattle City PD.
The proper venue for dealing with a corrupt sheriff's office is to file a complaint with the FBI about that sheriff's office. Try it yourself and see what happens. Regardless of the quality of your documentation and the severity of the corruption, you'll never receive so much as an acknowledgement letter from the Seattle office of the FBI OR from D.C.. Even in cases where the documentation has been sent via registered mail, and the FBI has signed for it, they'll later deny its receipt if you press them for action. We've documented and proven this in the past. In fact, it's even worse than that: Years ago we documented a case in which two deputies collected evidence of corruption (selling stolen goods, among other felonies) on two city judges and took it personally to the FBI; six months later, when nothing was done, the deputies re-approached the FBI and inquired; they were told the FBI had never heard of them. Disgusted, both deputies quit that week.
The Seattle city government is well aware of this good 'ol boy routine and counts on it to continue business as usual. It's despicable that the city should be allowed to continue to stick its residents in large and major ways, but to grind the city under its stiletto heels in stupid little ways like this seems, somehow, even worse.
We continued to advise various Seattle City government agencies via registered mail, as shown below.
On 9-22-08 we sent the following to the Seattle parking police at carbina.resendez@seattle.gov. No reply was ever received. This was sent again via registered mail:
We require an answer to this question: Is it legal or illegal, within the City of Seattle, to, at any time, park a legally licensed vehicle (a ford pickup, let's say) in such a way that any of its tires are resting completely on the raised curb, but NOT on any "planting strip" or sidewalk? If necessary we'll send this again via registered mail. We await a prompt reply.
[No reply was received.]
We contacted the Seattle Mayor's office again and advised that we would file a criminal complaint of corruption if this was not dealt with by 10-1-08. They replied and asked for the original citation number (why?); it was promptly provided (again). They then advised they were escalating the matter up to another agency. We waited.
Our experiences with ALL aspects and facets of the Seattle City government have run their course just about like this case. Remember that this is the city that approved funding for a new monorail mass transit system, and purchased all the properties needed along its entire route, and kicked every business out without proper compensation (many went broke), then, when this fiasco was complete, the City of Seattle announced that the project had to be abandon because the city had forgotten to factor in the INTEREST on the gaga-million dollar loan to build the system. Of course any 16 year old kid is counseled by every even semi-responsible parent on this precise concept before buying their first $1000 car -- but somehow the ENTIRE CITY OF SEATTLE missed this dog-simple lesson, and didn't catch it for.....what? TWO YEARS??!! THAT is the mentality we, the people (of Seattle), are at the mercy of, and it has become downright frightening. It's not incompetence; it's not even stupidity; it's actual mental retardation.
Carbina Resendez (carbina.resendez@seattle.gov) continues to refuse to respond to the very simple question (in blue, above). Therefore, the following was sent to Resendez's office, as follows:
Grace Crunican and/or Department Manager
Seattle Department of Transportation
PO Box 34996
Seattle, WA
98124-4996 Registered Mail Receipt: 2103 8555 7491 1449 XXXX
The following message was sent and delivered to your "Carbina Resendez" on 9-22-08.
That individual has refused to respond.
We now appeal to your department head via registered mail.
We demand a reply to the following very simple question.
The original email reads as follows, and the question stands:
“Is it legal or illegal, within the City of Seattle, to, at any time, park a legally licensed vehicle (a Ford pickup, let's say) in such a way that any of its tires are resting completely on the raised curb, but NOT on any "planting strip" or sidewalk? If necessary we'll send this again via registered mail. We await a prompt reply.”
This matter is being documented at the following url:
http://www.truth-or-consequences.com/bad_government/more_seattle_corruption/seattle_corrupt.html
In perpetual disgust,
[signature]
10-2-08
Before we could finish our corruption complaint to the King County Sheriff's office (who would do nothing anyway), we received the following masterpiece from the Seattle Police Department, specifically one -- well, actually, the author couldn't be bothered (or purposely neglected to) type out their name, so the public is left to try to decipher the signature, which APPEARS to read:
Als Ops Mgr
Rwoodside (R. Woodside?)It's a common ploy for insignificant bureaucrats, who know they're signing a stupid document, to pull this particular stunt and try to be sure they can't be traced back to said document. If a bureaucrat is proud of a letter they've drafted, they'll make sure their signature is prominent and clear, typed out in bold, but if they're trying to slither around a problem, their signature will usually appear as this one does. Watch for the pattern in your own dealings with bureaucrats -- you'll see it's true.
The letter, below, received by us on 10-15-2008, could not possibly illustrate the stupidity and backwardness of our city PD any more effectively. This, to us, demonstrates yet again that Seattle Parking Enforcement knows exactly what it's doing in terms of selective and corrupt parking enforcement, that it plans to continue doing it, that it's arrogantly thumbing its nose at every Seattle resident who demands FAIRNESS for its money, and that if ANYONE tries to expose and stop it, they'll receive air-headed nonsense like that shown below, for their trouble:
On 11-19-08 we also received the following; our reply is appended to it:
This is to confirm that you received a reply from Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske regarding the parking citation you received. It is my understanding that you have made a public disclosure request and will seek redress through legal means. Our office is no longer involved once this issue enters the legal system.
Thank you for contacting the Customer Service Bureau.Sincerely,
Wayne LennonCity of Seattle
Customer Service Bureau
(206) 684-CITY(2489)
So we sent out the following:
Wayne Lennon,
We received a reply from SPD which was utterly imbecilic, pretending (?) to not even grasp the basic issue or the purpose of our complaint. That was as expected, and we have posted that letter along with all other documentation, at
http://www.truth-or-consequences.com/bad_government/more_seattle_corruption/seattle_corrupt.html.
The issue remains the same:
We now have documented proof that it is illegal within the city to park on the curb. I was cited for that; I paid the fine; end of story --- EXCEPT that numerous other vehicles adjacent to mine do regularly, and are at this very moment, park(ed) within a car length of mine, yet none have been cited but mine (see website). A Seattle city employee’s vehicle was parked on the curb one car length from mine at the moment mine was cited, for instance, and it had been there, unmoved, for roughly 16 months without being cited, and it remains illegally parked at this very moment without being cited, despite SPD having now been informed of this via registered mail many times over the past several months. Any reasonable individual will be inclined to label this CORRUPTION. It’s clearly favoritism, and favoritism in law enforcement is corruption. SPD is famous for it, and we see more of it here than in any of the three countries and 16 states that we’ve lived and worked in with the exception of an ugly little burg near the Rio Grande. We believe, and we believe we can prove corruption in this instance given subpoena authority, that my vehicle was specifically and explicitly targeted for a citation in retaliation for a previous website I posted which is critical of Seattle’s parking enforcement.
Since your office has been of no material help, and since SPD responded only with ignorance and its usual stock-in-trade stupidity, we feel we have no recourse left but to file a corruption complaint with KCSO (and ultimately with the FBI because we all know KCSO will drop the ball – it’s a foregone conclusion). We are now simply amassing as much documentation as possible with which to file that complaint.
We expected no help from your office. We received none. But we have documented that we attempted to use logical, reasonable processes to resolve this.
[signature]
11-19-08CC: Internet post
BCC:
We received no reply to the above. And the problem continues (picture below taken week of 11-23-08);
UPDATE 2-2-09:
During the last week of January, 2009, still before we got around to filing with the King County Sheriff's office (an exercise in futility but we wanted to document the problem anyway) a Seattle City POE (Parking Enforcement Officer) cruised through the block in question here but issued no citation to the green pickup in question.
This is how the City of Seattle (and the state of Washington in general) operates.
This is how the City of Seattle (and the state of Washington in general) has ALWAYS operated.
This is how the City of Seattle (and the state of Washington in general) WILL always operate.
But we STILL made the following effort:
King County Courthouse
516 Third Ave
Room W-150
Seattle, WA 98104
Registered receipt: 420 98104 9121 8052 1390 -----------
Sheriff Rahr:We are enclosing a printout of a website which can be found at the following URL:
http://www.truth-or-consequences.com/bad_government/more_seattle_corruption/seattle_corrupt.html
It is self-explanatory. It details and documents CORRUPTION in the Seattle Parking Enforcement division of Seattle PD.
We do not want a reply from you people – we place you, honestly, about one-half grade above the rapists, druggies, pedophiles and assorted and nefarious other vermin in this city. We have documented (documented) the corruption in your office on previous occasions.We will continue to monitor this situation. If the problem has not been resolved in 30 days from the date you sign for this registered letter, we will move the issue up to the FBI, and thence to the Washington State Senate. We KNOW you will do little or nothing to remedy this. We KNOW the FBI will refuse to act when you refuse to do your duty. We’re betting there are a few Senators who are sick of this nonsense as well, but we could be wrong. Let’s all find out together.
In disgust,
[signature]
2-23-09
We received no reply to the above letter, and the problem persists.
UPDATE 4-15-2010:
We have continued to send complaints to every city and county office and agency we can think of. We realize that this is a straight-up matter of police corruption in the Seattle Police Department, so we thought we'd try one last complaint to the very office whose explicit job it is to deal with corruption in the Seattle Police Department. We knew nothing would come of it, but we wanted to be able to document the fact that we had tried. Here's our complaint to Seattle PD's internal affairs AND once again to City Hall:
Internal Investigation Section
Office of Professional Accountability
Police Headquarters
P.O. Box 34986
Seattle, WA 98124-4986Customer Service Bureau
City Hall
P.O. Box 94826
Seattle, WA 98124-4726This letter will serve to advise you of corruption (more corruption) within your parking enforcement department:
The green pickup, shown below, has been (1) parked on the curb for many months now (it has only occasionally been moved off the curb for a few days at a time over the past four YEARS), and (2) parked without moving for several months now. We have documented (via security cameras) your PEO people coming and going and citing other vehicles in the area, even NEXT TO this offending vehicle, but never citing this vehicle. They will routinely glance at it, parked as it is now, and then drive away. Research tells us this vehicle is owned by a Seattle City employee [Washington plate redacted].
When explicit complaints are tendered to the Seattle Parking Enforcement office, there will typically be a lag of several days, then the vehicle is moved so as to be legally parked, THEN a PEO drives through the area and glances at the vehicle, and keeps driving. [or maybe that's just a goll-derned coincidence]. A few days later the vehicle is parked back on the sidewalk. Again, this is documented over and over and over, for the past four years. It’s clear to us that when a complaint is filed, a PEO or some other city employee in the know advises the owner of this vehicle of an impending PEO visit, and the vehicle is quickly moved to avoid being cited, then moved right back onto the sidewalk when the danger is past. [or maybe that's just a goll-derned coincidence]
This is called CORRUPTION; it’s despicable; we’re ALL sick to bloody death of it, and it will stop. This matter is being documented publicly and is being submitted to all local media in due course (we’re going to allow you one last opportunity to start doing your jobs properly before we put this on local TV – say, ten days).
Just do your jobs honestly and competently. That’s all anyone asks. The PEOs involved in this corruption are selling their souls for some incredibly insignificant rewards and they’re making the citizenry of Seattle all that much more afraid of the Seattle city government and law enforcement agencies. If you can’t or won’t solve this, WE CAN, by making you folks far more famous than you ever dreamed you could be in the media.
Just do your jobs.
Really.
Just do your fucking jobs.
No corruption. No favoritism. No incompetence or malfeasance. No sleazy back-room wink-wink deals with city employees.
Just do your fucking jobs, no more, no less.4-15-2010
We received no reply to the above letter from any office, of course. We didn't wait 15 days to go to the media as suggested in the letter-- we waited FIVE MONTHS. The offending vehicle is still parked on the curb where it has been for more than FOUR AND A HALF YEARS. The City of Seattle is laughing at YOU -- the people who sign their paychecks. As of 9-6-2010, this vehicle remains illegally parked on the curb as shown below, while vehicles all around it are cited.
Here's our latest attempt to resolve this situation:
TO: All Western Washington Media:
Pursuant to SMC 11.58.250 the vehicle shown below is illegally parked at [redacted] NW, Seattle, Washington, 98117. This vehicle has been parked illegally for a documented 4.5 years, and probably many more years than that. Vehicles around it and adjacent to it are routinely cited, even for the exact-same infraction, yet this vehicle has never been cited (do a simple FOIA request). This infraction has been reported to the following agencies over the past four years:
Seattle Parking enforcement, three times: twice by First Class mail, once by registered mail
Seattle Police, once by First Class mail, once by registered mail
Seattle Mayor’s office, four times by email, twice via 1st class, once by registered mail
King County Sheriff’s office, once by 1st class, once by registered mail
Seattle PD Internal affairs, once by 1st classAs of 9-6-2010, 4.5 years later, the vehicle remains illegally parked. Why? We suggest you research the name of the driver, then cross reference it with Seattle City police employees; perhaps that will yield an insight.
What will happen if you file a complaint? In our experience, we’ve documented the following action:
- The vehicle will be moved off the curb. [or maybe that's just a goll-derned coincidence]. A few days later a PEO will drive through. A few days later the vehicle will be moved back onto the curb.
- A PEO will drive through, write citations for adjacent vehicles, glance at this green pickup which is parked on the curb, then will drive away without citing it.
All of this has been detailed and documented to all of the agencies and offices listed above.
Corruption? There is little more we can do to fight this. If you’re in the media, and you’re 1/10th as sick and weary of SPD corruption as we are, do the simple research so you don’t have to take our word for anything, then EXPOSE THIS. The light of day is the ONLY remedy to a government of cockroaches.
UPDATE 4-15-2010:
Of course we received no reply from any western Washington news media, even though we submitted the above letter multiple times to several of the news centers. Our next step is to have a copy delivered to the home of the Seattle Mayor via process server. It will be delivered directly into his hand. No secretaries. No "agents". The Mayor himself will be, from that moment onward, documentably aware of the situation, and when it isn't resolved, we'll ask that corruption charges be filed personally and directly against the Mayor. Of course the district attorney will never do that because even that office is documentably corrupt. But at least we will have proven our case beyond all shadow of a doubt and maybe a few folks will finally begin to understand just how arrogant and dishonest these King County and Seattle city governments really are. As of 10-16-2010, the pictures below document the situation as it stands currently. The truck in question is parked on the curb where it has remained without being cited like the vehicles around and adjacent to it, for as many as five years (over two years that we've documented on this website). We'd like to know what other duties are being neglected by the PEO assigned to this neighborhood route:
UPDATE 11-2-2010:
On this date we filed a suggestion on the "Ideas for Seattle" website (see below). Let's see how long it takes for an embarassed city government to remove the post. Or could it be that they are so immersed in corruption that they are incapable of being embarassed or chagrined?
UPDATE 12-18-2010:
Still parked on the curb, well over two years after the first complaints were made to the corrupt Seattle Police department by registered mail.
Still parked illegally. This is the Seattle Police Department thumbing its nose at YOU.
Conclusion:
We moved out of the state on June 1, 2011, specifically and explicitly due to crime and Seattle police corruption. This vehicle was parked on the curb on that date, and we're sure it still is today, and always will be.
By the way, the address there is 8353 13th ave NW, Seattle, 98117.
Welcome to Seattle.
Good bye and good riddance to Seattle.
