City of St. Joseph launches program to target abandoned and illegally parked vehicles
Praji Ghosh
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (News-Press NOW) — The City of St. Joseph is rolling out a new safety initiative aimed at addressing illegally parked and abandoned vehicles left on public streets.
Under the new program, any vehicle parked on the street must meet several requirements: it must have valid license plates, be insured, be in working condition and be parked correctly.
To help enforce these rules, the St. Joseph Police Department has added two civilian parking enforcement officers. Their job is to patrol neighborhoods, issue tickets, and place tow tags on vehicles that don’t comply with city ordinances.
The goal is to improve customer service and respond more effectively to ongoing parking complaints from the community.
“A lot of parking calls that we would get be on our lower priority calls, by implementing this type of parking enforcement, we can go ahead and our officers can focus on higher priority calls,” said Sgt. Richard McGregory with the SJPD.
This new enforcement effort builds on the city’s existing Downtown parking program — but now, it’s expanding across St. Joseph to tackle issues citywide.
The SJPD has assigned specific enforcement teams to write tickets and address violations.
Sgt. McGregory said it’s still early, but the department is monitoring public feedback.
“That’s going to be something that we later have to deal with and see how the community is responding to it because I only had a few calls from people about this concern,” Sgt. McGregory said.
Some community members are already welcoming the move.
Desire Hayes, a St. Joseph resident, believes stronger enforcement is long overdue.
“It’s just unacceptable that you can’t park your car over there because there’s a van parked over there where it’s not supposed to I think this enforcement will do good on a community level,” Hayes said.
Hayes said she hopes the stricter parking rules will push more drivers to follow the law.
Parking measures like this are designed to strengthen enforcement and encourage residents to follow the rules put in place by the city.
“I think having enforcement like this will help the community in a good way because I see things around me all the time, but I can’t do anything about it because my word won’t matter,” Hayes said.
As officers continue to issue tickets and tow tags, residents are also encouraged to play a role by reporting illegally parked vehicles through the city’s website.
News-Press NOW tried speaking to residents across St. Joseph who might be against the matter, but was declined for any interviews.