Monday morning, I jumped in my car and tried to go to work. Blocking the street on both sides, double parked so there were 4 vehicles spread across our narrow street, were 6 concrete mixers. There's a construction site right before a curve in the street that then narrows to where only 1 car can pass safely between those parked on either side.
I tried asking them to move, and asked them what I was supposed to do to get to work while they were blocking the entire street. This is a dead-end street without any other possibility of exiting, by the way. They ignored me. All of them. Just like I wasn't even there.
I was unable to turn around, because they were blocking the driveways and until I reached the curve, I couldn't even see the last mixer, parked right after it. So, I had to back up between mixers, cars and workers with shovels, wheelbarrows and hoses (one worker kept hosing down the concrete in his wheelbarrow and at the back of the truck, even when my SUV was in close range, presumably so he could demonstrate his contempt for me by spraying my vehicle with concrete.
I told them I was going to call the police, and I did. They transfered me to to the non-emergency line, but the operator told me he couldn't hear me "because I was breaking up" both in my car, on the sidewalk, in the driveway, and even in the house. I tried to tell him it was because by then, the concrete mixers were again on the move and revving their engines right beside me. One of them had also dumped a sizeable stream of concrete right outside the next door neighbor's house and had not cleaned it up. Two cars had driven through it, so good luck to them with removing that gunk from under their cars later.
I was given a number, because I could hear the operator very clearly, with no static, dropping out or anything else, and told to call back on my land line. I was now back inside my house and really angry. I called that number and was placed on hold. I called my supervisor on my cell and very clearly was able to ask her to call my patient and move the appointment up an hour, because I couldn't get there with everything that was going on.
The non-emergency call took 10 minutes to connect. My eardrums were assaulted with assurances that my call was very important to them, first in English, then in Spanish and then by a high pitched electrical noise that sounded like the emergency broadcast system was being tested. This was a device for the hearing impaired (was I now going to be one of them?) and the repeat message went on continuously throughout those 10 frustrating minutes as the concrete mixers got themselves in gear and started unblocking the street.
The operator was rude. She told me this was not LAPD's problem, except they were interested in the pile of spilled concrete and would investigate that "because it would be a problem for a long time to come." She told me I had to talk to the bureau of transportation and gave me that number.
Now it was time for me to go out the door again, because the hour I had moved the patient appointment up to was 20 minutes away. I called the transportation number on the way. The first time I was lucky--2 minutes and I was talking to an operator, but as I went over the big hill that causes dropped calls, well...the call dropped.
I called back. The entire trip to the patient's home, I was on hold. As I exited the freeway, I spoke at last with someone who could hear me. He was also disinterested in my problem. Parking enforcement, I was informed, could only cite someone if they were caught in the act. I had to call while it was happening. I told him I had tried to do that, but I was put on hold for so long, they had moved. He told me the same thing again, like I was either deaf (probably from the call to the police department) or stupid. He informed me that parking enforcement couldn't spend the day "driving around looking for people to do something wrong." Say what? That's exactly what they are doing, unless the cars I see around here are specifically targeting a vehicle while they're cruising. They even cruise up this street, and I told him that. He said, oh, that was good! I said, why couldn't they cruise up the street on a more regular basis while that was going on, and he thought that wasn't a plan at all.
I said, well, what you're basically telling me is that you're not going to do anything about this problem. The concrete mixers can block the street intermittently all day every day for as long as they want to and because they know it takes so long for anyone calling to even talk to an operator, much less have anyone in law enforcement or parking enforcement come out to investigate, they can continue to do it without any danger of being ticketed. He said "Don't put words in my mouth." I told him I was only summarizing what he was telling me, and he told me the same thing again. I told him I was ending the call because he was making me even more frustrated than I was when I was blocked from leaving the street and I hung up.
I informed both these operators that this is a dead end street with no other way out of it. The vehicles were blocking a public street, and if there was an emergency or a fire (we live in a moderate fire danger area,) that no emergency vehicles would be able to get in to assist. To me, this was an infraction that deserved at least a caution from an officer and a regular drive-by on the part of local parking enforcement. Parking enforcement is an agency that used to come by on a regular basis while my daughter lived here and ticket vehicles either hanging over 2 inches into the sidewalk (my daughter) from the driveway, when the sidewalk ended at the house next door, and ticketed a vehicle across the street that was blocking the owner's own driveway.
And then police and other local agencies wonder why the public doesn't like them, and thinks they don't care.
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