While playing softball down by the FDR memorial this evening, my team was a little shocked when we saw a park policeman not only issue a ticket to an illegally parked beemer, but bring in a tow truck. It wasn’t until the tow truck had scraped it’s bed underneath the beemer that a spandex-clad DC Council Member Vincent Gray came sauntering over to talk the cop out of taking his car away.

When someone on our softball team started taking pictures of the cops talking with Vincent Gray, one of the officers was angry. He walked over to us and demanded that I open our cooler, which was closed. Since there were empty beer cans inside, he wrote me a ticket for an open container. But I was not holding an open container, and I told him the cooler was not mine. There were several other softball teams nearby also drinking, but he only bothered us because one of our teammates took pictures of them letting Councilman Gray off the hook.

Another cop later told me that the officer who gave me the ticket was not allowed to order me to open the cooler. I wish I had known that at the time!

This is just one anonymous person’s version of events, of course. Chairman Gray’s communications director, Denise Reed, said that what happened was the car was quickly removed from the tow truck after Gray spoke to the officer, because it had originally been loaded on to the truck only due to “an error on the part of the U.S. Park Police.” A spokesperson for the U.S. Park Police declined to comment on whether that was true or not, explaining that towing cars is such a small, routine part of what the Park Police does that it wasn’t worth commenting on.

UPDATE: It’s worth noting, as one commenter did, that the D.C. council did in fact vote to exempt itself from all parking tickets in 2002.

Photo by dctreehugger, via the DCist Tip line