The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to impose a hefty fine on anyone caught misusing a disabled parking placard.

The new $1,100 fine is the maximum amount allowed by state law for a traffic violation, according to the motion by Councilman Bob Blumenfield. The ordinance increased the penalty from $343.

Some of the council members before the vote said the issue was a frustrating one, with continued reports of Department of Motor Vehicle sweeps catching hundreds of people at a time using disabled placards that don’t belong to them at concerts, sports games and other large events.

Blumenfield said he considered abusing disabled placards “a particularly heinous thing to do.”

“And so many people do it these days that they get lulled into a false sense that they’re not doing anything wrong,” he said. “You are either taking a spot away form someone who really needs it, or diluting that privilege and making it difficult for anyone to use it.”

Last year, the DMV checked nearly 2,000 placards in an operation at the L.A. County Fair. Nearly one-in-five were being misused, a rate that held steady from a similar 2017 investigation at the fair.

Officials say displaying a disabled parking placard allows the driver to park anywhere in the state, free of charge. For some, that makes for an enticing draw to break the rules, said DMV spokesman Jaime Garza.

Garza said in hundreds of operations over the last three years, DMV investigators have busted thousands of people using placards they may have bought illegally, borrowed from a disabled relative or obtained from a dead person.

The problem can be especially pronounced in areas of Los Angeles where parking is already nightmarish. Blumenfield said he was partly spurred to act after his staff did a spot survey of cars parked in Westwood Village near UCLA; they found about 40 percent were using disabled placards.

Councilman David Ryu said in his district, which covers parts of Hollywood, residents have begun to notice “unscrupulous operators” advertising on their vehicles, using disabled placards to park in one spot for hours

In the ordinance adopted Tuesday, city officials wrote that the previous $343 fine had “not had a sufficient deterrent effect in reducing the illegal use of disabled placards.”

Garza said cities like L.A. have the option of hiking that penalty all the way up to $4,200 if they prosecute the crime as a misdemeanor. Most cities and counties settle for issuing an expensive traffic violation.

L.A.’s new rules also put the city in line with others across the region. L.A. County’s penalties already ranged from $250 to $1,000. And though their fees vary slightly, fines for misusing disabled placards top out about about $1,100 in Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.