Few jobs are more thankless, or invite more cursing and murderous glares on any given workday, than that of a parking enforcement officer. But Washington, D.C., wants to find 80 residents to do the job for nothing.

Such is the level of frustration over the traffic and road-safety problems in the nation’s capital that a package of proposals under review by the District of Columbia Council includes enlisting private citizens to help enforce parking laws.

At the moment, the plan is just a single line in a 19-page bill that was introduced last month. The traffic bill is mostly about things like installing all-way stops at intersections and reducing the speed limit on most side streets to 20 or 25 miles an hour. But none of that has attracted nearly as much attention as the resident enforcement plan, which has conjured visions of a swift comeuppance for scofflaws idling in bike lanes while also raising alarms about the potential for abuse.