Illegal handicap parking has increasingly become an increasingly troubling trend, which has not only caused problems for students on all three campuses, but also other popular public facilities throughout the county.
If someone is illegally parking in one of these designated spots at your school, report the incident to the campus police. People who violate the rules by using these areas when they don’t need to take away from others who do need to park in the spaces. Ventura College police supervisor Bob Escobedo notes that not all individuals are penalized for this offense.
“There is a group of violators that are difficult to catch,” said Escobedo. “These are the people who use someone else’s placard, such as a family member’s, to park in the handicap spaces when the actual disabled person is not with them. This is actually a criminal offense.”
Approximately a dozen vehicles District wide per month are cited for handicap parking violations. Escobedo notes that of these, about eight are the result of the disabled forgetting to display their DMV issued handicap placard. Handicap parking spaces are reserved for people who are disabled to make it easier for them to gain access to public facilities. However, being disabled is not reason enough to legally park in a handicap space. A disabled placard must be issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles for your vehicle.
“On these types of violations, there is a vehicle code section which allows us to dismiss the citation,” said Escobedo.
VCCCD police chief James Botting says the fines issued for criminal and traffic violations are sent to the California State Penalty Assessment Fund, and then a portion of the fine goes to the Peace Officer Training Fund (POFT) to provide funds for training peace officers.
“It goes into a fund in Sacramento, and it’s redistributed for police training,” said Botting. “Eventually it goes to training through peace officers in standard in training and used for sponsoring police training.”
Only the person who has been issued the placard is entitled to use it. It is illegal to use someone else’s placard. Placard abuse can result in the cancellation of the placard and loss of the privileges it provides. Such abuse is punishable by a minimum fine of $250 up to $3500, and imprisonment of up to six months, or both. The amount an individual will pay for such a violation is set by the state of California. Permanent parking placards are for people with permanent disabilities, while temporary placards are valid for up to six months, or the date noted by your physician on the application.
While there is no way to know for sure exactly how many people park in designated handicap areas without a placard, each campus has cadets and officers patrolling for illegally parked vehicles on a periodic basis. However, they don’t always run across as many handicap violators as one would think, with the exception of the weekend swap meets at Ventura and Oxnard College.
For more information visit www.dmv.ca.gov or contact your campus’s police.
