We’ve all seen that bright blue wheelchair logo painted on the pavement that is no doubt designated for people with a valid accessible parking permit.
However, it looks like hundreds of Toronto residents didn’t get the memo.
That’s why Toronto police are cracking down on accessible parking permit fraud after seizing over 500 accessible parking permits in 2022 to investigate its misuse.
Kirsten Edgerton, acting patrol supervisor with Toronto’s parking enforcement, shared the most popular offence her team has seen so far.
“The most common offence is an individual who is using an accessible permit that isn’t theirs,” she told Now Toronto in an interview Friday.
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According to her, people are going around borrowing permits from a loved one or someone they are looking after.
In some cases, a caregiver would sometimes keep the permit in their vehicle and run the risk of misusing it themselves.
“They’re using it themselves on a daily basis to go to work. There’s also the fact that people are making copies, whether it’s their friends and other family members, a lot of people will say, ‘Oh, we have multiple cars in our family’ so they make multiple copies, and place them on different cars, in order to either go out or even park in front of their household,” Edgerton said.
Additionally, in some rare cases, people will even go as far as to sell permits to make a quick buck.
Police say they are not only aware of all the fraudulent activity happening in the city, but are actively looking into it.
That’s why they set up a helpline so residents can call and report a neigbour or someone they know that is allegedly misusing a permit.
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In other cases, parking officers will patrol the streets and match the permit to the person by waiting for them to return to their vehicle.
Edgerton shared that it’s a myth that a permit is registered to a vehicle. In fact, permits are registered to a person and as long as someone has a permit, they can use any car to get around.
In the end, misusing parking permits only hurt those who actually need access to disabled parking the most.
“A lot of people in the downtown core need to attend medical appointments and need to attend to hospitals for all appointments. And when they can’t get a parking space close enough to the destination area where they need to go, it actually affects them,” Edgerton said.
If caught misusing an accessible parking permit, fines can range up to $5,000.
