U Of T Campus Police Are Allegedly Faking Their Way Out Of Paying Parking Tickets

It appears there's some scheming going on in the 6ix. Police are investigating allegations that University of Toronto security officers have been using a trick to avoid paying for parking tickets. The approach apparently involves folding a sheet of plain white paper to ward off parking enforcement on a street by the school. 

CBC conducted an investigation and found that these cars could be traced back to U of T campus police constables, sergeants, and staff sergeants.

These officials were allegedly placing carefully folded sheets of plain white paper, to mimic that of a street parking permit.

The street in question is Sussex Avenue, near Bloor and Spadina.

Toronto Police are now looking into which parking enforcement officers may have been involved in seemingly letting campus police off the hook.

Some of the suspected culprits are thought to be on Ontario's Sunshine List, meaning they make over $100,000 a year, per CBC. Vehicles using the trick included Mercedes-Benz, Audis, and BMWs.

"The Toronto Police Services weren't aware of this practice, it's not something that we sanction," Brian Moniz, operations supervisor with Toronto Police Parking Enforcement Operations, told Narcity.

"Practices like this diminish the public trust in our organization and it's something we don't take lightly and we're looking into the matter and conducting an internal investigation."

"We're gonna have to do some analytics and determine who works in that area and if anyone was purposely avoiding tickets," added Moniz.

When also contacted by Narcity, U of T gave a brief statement saying, "The university is not aware of any special arrangements with the City of Toronto regarding parking and actively supports the city enforcing parking regulations near our campus."

On Sussex, residents are generally required to visibly display paid permits in order to leave their vehicles on the side of the road.

For students or residents who manage to get a sought-after spot, parking is available for just an hour at a time.

CBC notes that enforcement officers were witnessed patrolling and ticketing on Sussex, but that numerous cars remained there without punishment, often for a full day.

According to the CBC, a similar incident actually occurred back in 2016.

Back then, some drivers would put a campus police uniform patch on their dashboards while they were working in order to let parking officials know which cars shouldn't be ticketed.

Toronto Police parking officers have the remit to decide who does or does not get ticketed on public streets. Sometimes, they can be pretty picky, too, like the time a man was ticketed for parking on his own lawn. 

Meanwhile, this is somewhat less of a feelgood parking story than the time recently when a group of Torontonians ticketed cars with fake tags in order to make everyone's day brighter.

For now, despite U of T's statement, a Toronto Police investigation is underway.