Nobody likes a parking ticket. Nobody thinks they deserves a parking ticket. And everyone thinks the parking agents should ticket somebody else.
I know I've pontificated lately here and in Crime Scenes. A man ticketed while double parking to throw a laptop computer in his house so he didn't have to walk home with it and risk getting robbed. Hundreds of parking tickets dismissed because agents weren't notified of court hearings.
People weighed in on both stories, particularly on the one on the man with the computer. He was either a solid citizen penalized for trying to stay out of harm's way or a scofflaw who felt the rules didn't apply to him.
Well, now comes Kashi Walker, seen in the picture. He's an associate minister for an East Baltimore church who, at the behest of police and fire officials, opened up his sanctuary for the relatives of the victims of Tuesday's carbon monoxide poisoning on Guilford Avenue. Two people died and three others were seriously injured.
He parked in a no-parking zone -- restricted on Tuesday's from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. to make way for street cleaners (the car is also shown in the picture). But the street just ahead was blocked by fire trucks, police cars and other emergency vehicles. He got a ticket anyway.
"It's a shame," he told me.
A spokeswoman for the city's Department of Transportation said that agents weren't out looking for parking violators at the scene of a tragedy. Rather, she said the agent had noticed that Walker had parked in that spot on Monday, and again Tuesday morning, and had returned there to see if the car was still there around 12:30 or so. She said the agent thought Walker was taking advantage of the emergency scene to park where he shouldn't.
Walker points out that even if his car was there all day Monday and Tuesday morning (he said it wasn't), it was perfectly legal during those hours. So why, he says, would the agents have marked his car for special attention?
Another good one for the judge.