Cash, not concern for handicapped, drives new parking crackdown
Via Peoria Pundit:
The police are cracking down. Are the going after drug dealers who operate with impunity in some neighborhoods? No. Are they going after litterbugs who make neighborhoods look like third-world villages after the tsunami hits? Oh, heavens no. They are going after people who park in handicapped spaces:
Starting Jan. 1, fines for drivers who illegally park in the spaces, as well as those who use the blue rear-view mirror placards without authorization, will jump hundreds of dollars and in some cases also result in suspended drivers' licences.
Beginning the day after Thanksgiving and continuing through the end of the year, Secretary of State Police have been targeting shopping mall parking lots searching for offenders before the new law takes effect.
In just a few hours Thursday, Sgt. Corey Coffrin handed out five citations at The Shoppes at Grand Prairie and said abuse of disabled parking places is rampant around the state.
What a steaming pile of horse crap. I'm coming up on a half century of life, and I have never, ever, ever seen a parking lot in which every single handicapped parking space was filled, legally or illegally.
I have, however, been denied the right to engage in Interstate Commerce because I couldn't find a legal space to park at smaller strip malls because all the non-handicapped spaces were filled while every single handicapped space was empty. Not wanting to pay a $200 fine, I didn't and what common sense says is the appropriate thing to do: Take one of the unused spaces. After all, it's one thing to set aside spaces for people to provide equal access. It's quite another to deny ME access just in case someone else might want to shop.
This crackdown has nothing to do with protecting handicapped people. This is all about raising money.
Feh.
I suggest next time the Journal Star delves into this subject, instead of printing a handout from the Secretary of State's office, they assign a reporter to actually place a few calls to small business owners, architects and contractors to find out what a hassle it is to build a place of business on a small lot when the law requires them to set aside parking spaces that will hardly ever be used by paying customers.
4 comments:
Your kidding, right?
A bill was passed in the late 1990's allowing citizens to be trained to enforce the handicapped parking ordinances.
I wonder if Peoria has taken advantage of it.
Reporters who ask may well hear that business owners don't like allocating a share of parking spaces to people with disabilities.
I'll bet a lot of them don't like meeting certain building code standards, or having to post information about fair hiring practices. What is your point?
Pre-ADA, I pushed my mother's wheelchair through rivers of slush, around icy patches, manuevered around cross traffic, etc. from the fringes of crowded parking lots. And if I hadn't had the strenght to do it -- say I was her elderly mother instead of her young daugher -- she would have been isolated well beyond the terrible limitations already imposed by her illness.
A suggestion: get up from the keyboard, raise your arms up high, stretch from your toes to the ceiling, then take a brisk walk and thank your lucky stars that you can do so. It works in parking lots too.
The one thing I took with me forever 25 years ago as a physical therapy aide at the Rehab Institute was how a young 9 year old girl from the North Shore, a 45 year old editor at the Wall Street Journal, an internationally acclaimed psychologist, a young high school kid from Cabrini-Green all seperately and in ONE LOUSY NEW YORK MINUTE had gone from being fully functioning to being someone permanently and painfully disabled and eligible for one of those precious yet oh so under-used Handicapped parking spots.
They were human, just like me and just like you Dennis. Perhaps, they too at sometime in their active, walking, running, shopping, restauranting, self-toiletting life before that fateful car crash, skiing accident, gun shot, or heart attack had been pissed-off about someone with a walker making them miss an elevator, or had grumbled under their breath about someone in a wheelchair holding up the progress of the bus they were on, or how they couldn't park closer to a store in a freaking empty parking spot because it designated Handicapped Parking. Then everything changed.
What I learned at the Rehab Institute is not to take for granted for one minute the first step of the day my wife, my child or I take.
It can all change for the worse for anyone at anytime. And, it makes absolutely no difference what you do in life,or who you are....it is the least discriminating event I have ever witnessed...it can happen whether you are a caring, generous loving person or someone so pitifilly petty and small that, among all the things on which they could take a stand, they can only find it in themselves to stand for the injustice, lo' the inhumanity of the state-wide preponderance of under-utilized Handicapped Parking spaces.
Sheesh.
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