August 4, 2008
'SweeperCam' Begins Today with Warnings
The District's Department of Public Works today begins using its new "SweeperCam" technology, those cameras attached to street sweepers that can take photos of illegally parked cars and issue parking citations to them. In a press release, the department says that for the next 45 days, illegally parked cars caught on the "SweeperCam" will receive warnings only. Regular tickets with fines attached will be issued beginning October 14, 2008. DPW officials stressed that the goal of the program is to keep streets clear of cars during street cleaning so that sweepers can do their jobs.
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a couple comments here:
1) this is awesome. maybe this will finally light a fire under the asses the damn people who never move their cars and leave us with dirty streets.
2) does this mean that the regular parking police, in their honda civics, won't be out patrolling for parking scofflaws in residential neighborhoods on street-cleaning days anymore?
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A couple of comments on your comments.
1. I've been living in my current building for five years and I don't think I've ever seen a street sweeper on our street, but I have seen plenty of tickets issued.
2. Those people are Satan incarnate
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hillrat: do you have a ton of trash sitting in the gutters then? give a shout out to your council member (wells?), they love to look like they're getting stuff done by jumping on the easy things like this.
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ImGoph, are you making a joke? I have yet to see a street that was not dirtier post-sweep rather than cleaner. Street cleaning days are a parking ticket racket everywhere they exist.
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Hmm. We've been playing cat and mouse with the street sweeping ticketers for years. TO me this sounds like the equivalent of a 45 day amnesty, which will give my family a break with just warnings instead of the usual ticket when we forget to move. Then back to normal (except with sweepercam the tickets will come via a different route).
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So if I'm getting my knob gobbled on Florida Avenue and the sweeper cam takes my picture, is it a violation of my privacy? And who do I sue?
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loganmo: well, i don't know how things go down in your 'hood, but up in bloomingdale, you can clearly tell when your block has been cleaned, vs. not. it makes a big difference, getting rid of the accumulated detritus from a week of people dumping chicken wings and styrofoam cups out their open car doors....
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I work from home, so I'm intimately familiar with the regular noises on the street. On 13th in Columbia Heights, the sweeper goes by at about 9:22, instead of the posted 9:30. They gonna set their clocks forward or ignore any "ticket" generated before the posted time?
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Only somewhat related. But I laughed on the way home from the Aimee Mann concert on Saturday. I'm walking down U Street just as a Civic full of parking enforcers (like clowns in a car) pull up at 15th and U Streets and park in front of a bus stop AND a fire hydrant. Then the four of them started walking down U Street to ticket cars (there were a couple parked illegally).