In 1989, Wilmington, North Carolina police caught parking fraudsters

Parking in downtown Wilmington has been subject to payment for decades, whether on the street or in parking garages.

To avoid additional costs associated with parking violations, some people resorted to destroying the evidence 35 years ago.

How this works was illustrated by an article in the May 26, 1989 issue of the Wilmington Morning Star with the headline “Police foil tricks to circumvent downtown parking rules.”

Back then, “Wilmington parking attendants would mark the tires with chalk so that when police returned to the block on their rounds, they would know how long each vehicle had been there,” the article said.

Some have found ways around this by “erasing the chalk markings or driving the vehicle around the block and then parking it in a nearby parking lot.”

After Wilmington police received complaints about chalk wiping, a patrol officer worked with the parking attendant and caught some people in the act of receiving tickets. Police could have fined the offenders for violating a city ordinance, but instead stuck with the $5 tickets for the “surprise and unfortunate parkers who thought they had outsmarted the system.”