Errant ticket writers in Baltimore might have messed with the wrong neuroscientist. As the city?s burgeoning scandal over bogus parking tickets continues to grow, Jaclyn Schwarz, a Ph.D. candidate at University of Maryland Medical School, might have uncovered the biggest bogus ticket-writing spree yet: 10 false citations written in a single neighborhood ? five written in a matter of minutes.
“She really went out of control on that day,” Schwarz said of the parking enforcement agent named H. West currently under investigation by the city?s Inspector General?s Office.
Schwarz?s story begins the day she received a citation inthe mail for being illegally parked on the 2000 block of West Pratt Street on April 4. The problem: Her boyfriend also received a ticket for being illegally parked in the same location.
“If she hadn?t given a ticket to my boyfriend, I might have never had looked into this,” Schwarz said.
“It was my mother?s birthday, too, so I remembered the date,” she said.
Knowing that both she and her boyfriend were parked in front of Schwarz? east Baltimore apartment that night, Schwarz decided to investigate.
“We noticed our citation numbers were 16 numbers apart, so we started looking at other intervals online,” said the former Boston resident.
“Once we got the pattern down we started looking for other citations written at the same time for the same locations as ours, and wrote down the license plate numbers,” she said.
Then Schwarz searched her neighborhood.
“I got excited,” she said. “I found almost all of the cars parked on my block”
Schwarz discovered 10 cars that had received bogus tickets while parked in or around the 800 block of Hollins Street on the same day, including the pickup truck of her 80-something neighbor, Anna Wisneiwski.
“They said I was on Baltimore Street, and I wasn?t,” said the lifetime Baltimore resident, who showed up in court with her bus pass, trying to convince a judge she rarely moved her truck.
“It?s really frustrating, because it?s your word against the agent,” Schwarz said. “It?s very difficult to prove you?re innocent.”
For her efforts, Schwarz did receive a letter from the city Department of Transportation saying her car had been ticketed in error. But Schwarz notes that she has not been able to contact all of her neighbors, who might still face fines and penalties.
“I put letters on people?s cars,” she said. “But who knows.”
As for the five-year Baltimore resident who will be leaving the city after graduating with her Ph.D. in neuroscience, Schwarz said her time in the city has not been easy.
“They?re always blaming the people who live here” she said. “My house was broken into, and they said it was my fault for not having the correct lock.
“It?s a very difficult city.”
