Drivers are determined to prove a point after receiving parking tickets they say are bogus from the city of New Orleans.

Advertisement WDSU Investigates: More people receive bogus parking tickets in New Orleans Fewer then 1% win cases on appeal Share Shares Copy Link Copy

New Orleans residents are getting parking tickets, but is the city of New Orleans the one in violation?When parking control officers hand out tickets, they have the technology to take a picture of the vehicle that's believed to be improperly parked.But WDSU found evidence that sometimes proves the parker's point.It's about 57 miles from Chackbay in Lafourche Parish, to the French Quarter in New Orleans and takes about an hour to drive.Renee Allemand, is a mother of two who lives in Chackbay with her family.She received a letter from the city of New Orleans before the holidays in December."It's a citation from the parking violations bureau in the city of New Orleans," Allemand said.Allemand doesn't frequent the area very much."(I was) extremely shocked, because I have never gotten a parking ticket in New Orleans, I haven't been there in months - maybe years - and I don't even know where Toulouse Street is," Allemand said.She called city hall and asked for proof from the city that the ticket was issued properly.She received a picture, taken with one of the devices that parking control officers use in New Orleans when they issue tickets.The problem is that, the car that the city says is illegally parked - isn't Allemand's."My vehicle is a Chevy Tahoe, which is an SUV - and the vehicle in this picture is a Mercedes Benz, and it's silver and it's a four-door sedan," Allemand said.WDSU asked city officials abut the ticket, but they declined to talk about specific cases.'I have to prove myself innocent here," Allemand said.And it's not the first time WDSU has investigated this situation and found, what looks to be, bogus tickets being issued by city hall.Last November, taxicab driver Glenn Trotter used the city's picture technology to prove that his cab wasn't illegally parked on Bourbon Street when the city said it was.He drives for United Cab, and the image that the city sent him is not of a United Cab vehicle.We also caught up with four other people from the Northshore to Houma, who all found themselves in the same situation.Now the inspector general wants to take a look."If you have multiple exceptions, it's quite possible it could be a systematic problem, so it does need to be examined," Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux said. "It seems like it's a pattern, it doesn't seem like there are checks and balances in that office and that's a problem."Quatrevaux's investigators issued a scathing report on the city's parking control officers.In some cases, the IG found parking control officers spending hours at a time sitting inside coffee shops, on their cellphones, using free Wi-Fi and getting paid for it.The report says that at least one parking control officer retaliated against those who complained.Now he wants to see if there's more to what Allemand and the others are experiencing."OK, look, this could be an innocent mistake or it could be a systematic problem because now you've got a whole bunch of these, so I think it certainly deserves a look," Quatrevaux said.City officials says all people who think they were ticketed improperly are entitled to a hearing, and they admit that sometimes parking control officers make mistakes."Do you all welcome the IG looking into this?" WDSU asked."Absolutely. A second and third set of eyes is always welcome," New Orleans Public Works Director Mark Jernigan said.In 2015, 581,546 vehicle citations were issued -- 201,746 of them for traffic safety camera citations and 379,800 were parking citations.Of the 581,546 vehicle citations, 4,353 -- or fewer than 1 percent -- were dismissed as part of the appeals process.I'm going to prove my innocence," said Allemand. "I'm not going to pay $20 when I know it wasn't mine.""The way you get to the bottom of things is when you get what looks to be a system problem and mismatched plates and the actual ticket, that's worrisome ... so it really needs to be looked into," Quatrevaux said."Well, first off, all parking control staff go through four to six weeks of training before they go out in the field. They do that and more before they are ever allowed to issue citations," Jernigan said.The city conducted 12,965 adjudication hearings and 422 re-hearings in 2015 -- an average of about 50 a day.The city also tried to collect from delinquent customers going back years.In 2015, 257,432 notices were sent out for delinquent tickets.