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Promising Practices
Really?! Handicap Parking Spot Painted Around Car
- By Mark Micheli
- February 11, 2013
- Comments
Image via Nicholas Raymond/Shutterstock.com
Welcome to another round of what’s not excellent in government. This time we turn our gaze overseas and visit the mean streets of Tel Aviv, Israel.
Scene: On a peaceful, sunny afternoon in Tel Aviv, Hila Ben Baruch legally parks her car and sets about her day. What happened next was anything but kosher.
According to HLN, Ben Baruch wrote on her Facebook page that upon returning to her car, “the big surprise that awaited me broke all records and I couldn’t believe my eyes—my car was not in the space I parked it in and in its place was a parking space for the disabled.”
Bam! $366 ticket. Sorry Ms. Baruch…but nobody is above the law. Justice. Served.
Or was it?
When she called the city government to lodge a complaint—insisting that the spot was not initially handicapped—she was told she was lying. Oldest trick in the book, right? What’d she think, somebody “magically” painted a handicap spot around her car while she was gone?
As it turns out, that’s exactly what happened.
A security camera recorded the dubious deed in full. See for yourself:
After the video went viral, Tel Aviv officials responded in an official statement, saying “This was a severe mistake and a case of incompetence that the city of Tel Aviv does not accept…We apologize for the distress and will examine our conduct for the future, so that these kinds of things won’t happen again.”
Ben Baruch’s fine was thrown out. Proving, that with the right combination of outrageous and hilarious, you can fight city hall and win.
Read more about the case at HLN.com. Thank you David for the tip.
Image via Nicholas Raymond/Shutterstock.com.
Mark Micheli writes Excellence in Government’s Promising Practices blog and serves as the program manager of the Government Business Council. Prior to his current roles, he worked as a management consultant on national security and emergency management issues with the US Treasury Department. He’s worked as a political research analyst, a reporter for the Des Moines Register at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland and is a graduate of the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs. He studied at Drake University where he has degrees in Magazine Journalism, Political Science and History.
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