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A Salt Lake City man is taking up the cause of handicapped drivers, exacting justice in parking stalls.
Georg Stutzenberger laughs when you ask him if the city has offered him a job yet. "I don't think that the city can afford me," he said.
But the fact is, he generated nearly $50,000 for the city last year by writing roughly 350 parking tickets at handicapped stalls. "It obviously works because in the areas I am writing those tickets, I can say that it probably went down about 60 to 70 percent," he said.
It's probably not surprising, considering Stutzenberger accounted for 27 percent of all the handicapped parking tickets in Salt Lake last year. The Salt Lake Tribune reports he also is responsible for about 80 percent of all Salt Lake City's tickets written by volunteers.
He says it doesn't take a lot of time, just concentration on the right areas.
Stutzenberger is a member of the Salt Lake City Police Department's Mobile Neighborhood Watch program. Detective Dennis McGowan says volunteers like Stutzenberger go through trainings and ride-alongs so they can spot all types of criminal activities.
"We have 115 members," McGowan said.
These volunteers are not deputized, but after a year in the program they are authorized to write up parking tickets to people who park in handicap spots -- an area police don't have a lot of time for.
The volunteers also drive around assigned areas looking for anything suspicious.
E-mail: aadams@ksl.com
E-mail: rjeppsesn@ksl.com
