It was a rare night. I was by myself. I finished evaluating AR last night and he decided to take tonight off.
One of the major nuisances in the part of the city that I patrol is illegal parking. There is not any zoning so there are businesses and residences built right on top of each other. A number of the businesses are night clubs and bars. As you can imagine, this creates a parking nightmare at night. Residential streets end up being clogged with cars that park in the street and while the owners walk to the bars and clubs. The city has responded by making public streets permit parking only during certain hours. The city has also put up tow away signs on those streets if the vehicle does not have a valid permit to park on that city block. A fellow officer ran out of parking tickets on one of these streets and asked for someone to bring by a parking ticket book. I checked by with him and he ticketed 4 cars and I ticketed three cars for parking on a public street without a permit. While we were ticketing the cars, an Infiniti G35 kept driving by. After noticing the car a few times, we started to watch it a little more closely. The Infiniti would pull over at the end of the block and pick up a valet driver and then ferry him to the parking lot that the valet drivers used to park the cars. This parking lot was a few blocks away from the valet stand where patrons dropped off their cars. On one trip down the street, we noticed that the Infiniti had a valet coupon on the dashboard. This led us to believe that the valet company was using a customer's car to ferry drivers from the business to the parking lot. We doubted that the Infiniti's owner had given the valet company permission to use their car in that manner. We went to the valet stand and asked for the manager. A phone call was made. A few minutes later we noticed the Infiniti pull over at the same corner. We watched the manager get out of the car and tell the driver to take off. We stopped the Infiniti and started investigating. We were able to find the Infiniti's owner in a nearby bar. Not surprisingly, he had not given the valet company permission to use his car in that manner. The owner stated that he had given the valet company the keys at 11:45 PM. We stopped the Infiniti at 2 AM. They had been using his car for over two hours. We then called the district attorney's office. The DA that we spoke with seemed to take our story personally. Maybe he uses valet services fom time to time? We ended up taking the valet driver and manager to jail. The driver for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle since he did not have permission to use the vehicle in that manner and the manager for criminal trespass since he did not have permission to be in the vehicle. I guess the moral of the story is, if you use valet services, check the odometer of your vehicle before you give it to them and when you get the vehicle back. You never know what they might have been doing with your vehicle.
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