Police parking crunch worsens at Judiciary Square
By: Maria Schmitt
Special to The Examiner
June 5, 2009
Up to 30 parking spaces outside police headquarters on Indiana Avenue were closed earlier this week, further tightening the number of spots available to police officers with business in Judiciary Square.
“We had no warning,” Police union Chairman Kristopher Baumann said. “We haven’t heard why.”
Concrete barriers and large orange cones continued to block off both the police-only and public spaces in front of headquarters Thursday.
Baumann said previous solutions to the problem — like Mayor Adrian Fenty’s proposed construction of a parking lot two years ago — have not been followed through.
Police Chief Cathy Lanier has suggested that officers could take the Metro to and from Judiciary Square. That’s not realistic, Baumann said.
“That’s more and more lost time,” he said. “It’s hundreds of man-hours a week. Most stations across the country would give their arm to have an additional couple hundred man-hours each week.”
Calls to police officials and the mayor’s office this week for this story were not returned.
Several officers interviewed by The Examiner a few weeks ago said they were getting parking tickets from their fellow officers as they tried to get work done in headquarters, appear before grand juries or testify in court.
“Court is not something you can brush off,” Detective Howard Howland said. “You have a lot of officers who make a lot of arrests and who go to court a lot.”
Baumann said ticketed officers were often cited on time issues, such as parking in one spot for three hours when the limit is one.
“If you have a 1 p.m. trial and the judge holds it up for four hours and you’re the prosecution, if you’re not there when they call the case, they will dismiss it,” he said. “Officers must be available and ready to testify, they can’t go out and move their cars.”
