On a shopping expedition to Costco in Van Nuys yesterday, I passed a perfectly healthy looking 40-year old woman driving her Mercedes SUV into a handicapped parking space. Her car door opened and she: impeccably groomed, with straight black hair, botoxed lips and black nylon stretch pants…. ran into the store.
I noticed, as have many in LA, that many of these violators are of ______ethnic origin. Nothing wrong with that, “they” have suffered oppression in their native land, and have developed a tough, aggressive exterior to do battle in the Southland. I have also seen these same people, usually teenage drivers, run through red traffic lights all over the Valley.
What is wrong with confronting these lawbreakers either by ticketing them or in the case of the Costco parking lot, walking up to them and calling their bluff? Why does the administration of Antonio Villaraigosa allow this “minor” illegality to mushroom into something that helps undermine the social well being of our city?
Haven’t we had enough of this crap?
Here in Van Nuys 
Super-WASP Cade McNown was the main offender in the UCLA footballers-parking-in-handicapped-spots scandal about ten years back. Everyone in Chicagoland was optimistic when the Bears drafted him, thinking that he would finally be the solution to the perpetual quarterback crisis that has hung about the team since the days of Sid Luckman. I knew better, though. Why?
On the very first day of his first Bears training camp at UW-Platteville, McNown parked his brand new Suburban…in a handicapped spot.
Sure enough, he was out of the league before long. Never mind that he was well under six feet tall (pretty much the bare minimum height for an NFL QB) and threw like a 9-year-old girl with muscular dystrophy: McNown’s biggest problem was that he was a schmuck who didn’t think the rules applied to him.
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The DMV shouldn’t be handing these out like candy, even though, with their current hand-out rate and violators, as well, there still seem to be way too many invariably empty handicapped spaces guarding the buildings while everyone else looks for a spot some ways away. Whoever came up with the ratio way overestimated the mobility of the average handicapped person, or the numbers of such persons, perhaps.
As for the suggestion that one should not question anyone because their disability might be hidden – perhaps restless leg or chronic fatigue syndrome? – this is quite incorrect, as their handicapped parking placard must be prominently displayed when parked regardless of how or why they obtained it.
In cities not overrun by criminal scum, enforcing such laws would be a relative priority. Here, of course, there are so many crimes that even in “good areas” of LA County, the police say they are basically only concerned with violent crime, and all else is just a report you can file, which they will not act upon.
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i know someone who’ mother is handicapped, sh drives her around and has a placard. when she does not have her mother with her, she still parks in a handicapped space.
she is a cow.
and i should not comment on her race, as it has been pointed out that it is not necessary.
but i’m just sayin’ – she ain’t white
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Armenians, Persians, and other Middle Easterners.
Censorship?
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Carter-
Let’s hope so. But hired help doesn’t look anything like the women I’ve seen parking their Range Rovers and Mercedes in the handicapped zone.
Andrew
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Oftentimes the operator of said vehicles are actually the hired help of the actual owners of said vehicles and are just out using the vehicle of the household to do shopping, errands, etc., and the head of house has such placard, not the operator of the vehicle.
Just a possibility!
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I’m not naming the ethnicity because if you asked 100 random people who is doing it, you would come up with 100 different scapegoats. All cultures and creeds are abusing it, but it doesn’t seem to be a vice of our poorer ethnic groups who are usually targeted for every social problem in LA.
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Are some posts being preempted?
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The problem doesn’t lie in the “ethnicity” you have the nerve to single out, but not the balls to name. It’s in the DMV giving out the plates like cigars. If the problem is a loophole and people take advantage of it, than it’s on the DMV not an ethnicity.
I see all cultures and creeds abusing the system. But perhaps that doesn’t matter to you.
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Scott-
With all due respect, a “disorder of the gastro-intestinal system” should not accord someone the right to get a handicapped parking sticker. If someone is old, or is in a wheelchair or uses a walker, or has injured their leg…these are the ones who deserve special assistance.
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I have a bit of insight into this.
My friend’s wife has a handicapped parking placard, though she has no problem moving, bending, jumping, walking, stepping, running, climbing, etc.
What she does have is a debilitating disorder of the gastro-intestinal system, which acts up at times, but not even all the time.
Apparently, this is quite enough to get you a handicapped parking placard. So, as the cliche goes, don’t judge a book by the cover.
Just because she has nice makeup and clean clothes on, doesn’t mean that there’s nothing wrong with her.
Whether or not the DMV should be distributing handicapped parking placards for disabilities that are not obvious to the human eye is, I think, a separate question. You can protest to the DMV on that one if you want. Just know it might be quite kosher for this seemingly healthy woman to have the right to park at the handicapped spot.
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Maybe the person had a stutter Andrew, don’t be so insensitive. Just kidding.
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