LOST AND FOUND My car was stolen, no one could find it – then I checked the parking ticket website & all the clues I needed were there
Kristen Brown
Published: 18:59 ET, Oct 12 2023Updated: 0:23 ET, Oct 13 2023
A WOMAN has shared how she found her stolen car by looking up parking tickets on her city website.
She and other residents have been left baffled by the fact that their stolen cars were being ticketed - all while they had no idea where the vehicles were.
Almost 100 stolen vehicles were collecting street sweeper tickets after they were abandoned, according to the SF Chronicle, San Francisco, California's largest newspaper.
The publication analyzed stolen car data and found that 97 vehicles had yet to be recovered but continued to rack up parking tickets.
Between May 1 and September 17 of this year, 2,000 cars were reported stolen to San Francisco police, and 411 of them were issued tickets after the theft, the newspaper reported.
Normally, ticketing officials with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Association (SFMTA) are supposed to run the license plates of vehicles they're ticketing to ensure they're not stolen.
If a plate comes back as stolen, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) could return the vehicle to its rightful owner.
Apparently, the vehicles are being ticketed without plates being run.
This phenomenon is so common in San Francisco that some victims of theft are able to recover their cars themselves by checking the SFMTA database of transit tickets, SF Chronicle reported.
Christy Gagan did just that.
Gagan posted about her stolen car on the Nextdoor app and several neighbors suggested she run her license plate through the SFMTA ticketing database to see if her car had been ticketed.
Sure enough, she was able to see that her car got a ticket in the Fillmore area after it was stolen from her West Portal home - a five mile trip one way.
Her husband drove to their stolen Infiniti SUV and phoned the SFPD, who instructed him to wait by the car for an officer.
Gagan's husband found a plethora of stolen merchandise in the vehicle and, after waiting a few hours, drove the car to a police station.
Stolen credit cards and a variety of auto parts were strewn across the victim's vehicle, and they told the SF Chronicle it looked like a "chop shop was set up in my car."
A chop shop is an element of the black market for automotive parts.
It's common for vehicles to be stolen for the sole purpose of being stripped down to sell individual pieces, as stolen car parts are nearly impossible to trace.
“The concept that you need to rely on self-help to find your stolen car is nuts,” Susan Kostal, another car theft victim, told the Chronicle.
“Neither SFPD nor SFMTA seems concerned about finding cars and closing these cases. It’s pretty clear it’s a low priority for both agencies.”
An SFMTA spokesperson told the Chronicle that ticketing officials no longer have access to a police database for California, though officials in San Diego do - after they undergo a strict background test.
“We have no specific policy regarding checking vehicles to see if they are stolen during the normal course of duties,” Stephen Chun, SFMTA spokesperson, told the SF Chronicle.
It isn't clear whether the vehicle owner is responsible for tickets that were issued before their stolen car was recovered.
After the SF Chronicle investigation, the mayor ordered SFMTA to stop ticketing stolen vehicles and help reunite them with their owners instead, the newspaper reported.
The U.S. Sun has reached out to both the SFPD and SFMTA for comment.
https://www.the-sun.com/motors/9315865/parking-tickets-stolen-vehicles-san-francisco/