TAKAAKI IWABU - takaaki.iwabu@newsobserver.com
UPS driver James Riley calls his manager after he found his truck wearing two wheel-locking boots. Raleigh parking workers placed them. He said he left his truck unattended less than 2 minutes on the corner of Salisbury and Hargett streets while he was delivering packages to nearby offices.
RALEIGH -- United Parcel Service delivery driver James Riley pulled his brown box truck alongside the curb in downtown Raleigh late this morning, strolled into the Raleigh Building and took an elevator upstairs to deliver some packages.
Riley, who has been with UPS for 30 years, said he thinks he was in the building at 5 Hargett Street for no more than a couple of minutes.
Dustin Winkler, a downtown employee, said soon after Riley went inside the Raleigh Building, a City of Raleigh ParkLink car pulled behind the UPS truck. An employee got out of the car and attached two boots on the front wheels on the driver's side of the vehicle.
A lady who saw Riley as he stepped off the elevator first sounded the alarm.
"Sir! Sir!" the woman cried, "they're booting your vehicle!"
The "they" in this instance, were City of Raleigh employees who ticket --- or in this instance, clamp the dreaded boot ---- on the vehicles of motorists who are illegally parked in downtown.
Riley parked his UPS truck in front of a red and white sign that read, "no parking at any time."
"Why did they put two on?" asked the hapless driver.
Riley's ticket indicated the truck was booted at 11:57 p.m.
It was 1 p.m. when Winkler walked back around the corner to Hargett Street and saw the truck was still wearing the boots.
"Pedestrians [who had gathered] were talking about how ridiculous it was that this had to be done," Winkler wrote to The News & Observer in an email this afternoon. "A co-worker and I were discussing how ParkLink now seems to be almost as bad as the predatory towing was a few years back and how inefficient the system is. Every week at least one or two people stop me on the street to ask for assistance using the meters."
Tina Overton, a spokeswoman with ParkLink, which handles downtown parking enforcement, would not say why the UPS truck was booted.
"I can't talk about UPS, but generally, if you have three or more parking tickets that have not been paid for over 90 days you can get booted," she said.
Riley said he was ticketed in October.
He said the ticket he received this morning and that one in October are the only two he has ever received since delivering to downtown for the past 15 years.
The City of Raleigh booted him in October too.
"They put one on and came back in 10 or 15 minutes to take it off," he said.
The city took over downtown parking enforcement last June from Raleigh Park, a private company.
"The city believed they could provide a better service," Overton said.
However, more than a few downtown employees and visitors think the city's definition of providing a better service has resulted in aggressive, over-the-top enforcement. It's common to see parking employees in the Oakwood District, blocks away from downtown, writing parking citations.
"I wouldn't use the word aggressive," Overton said, "but they were hired to do their job for the city."
