To release the device, drivers call a toll-free number and provide credit card account information to pay old tickets and a $100 fine. Drivers receive a code number that unlocks the device.
The motorist must drop off the boot in one of the collection locations or be charged an additional $500 penalty. If the boots aren't removed in four days, cars are towed.
Unlocked boots can't be relocked, so rogue residents can't drive around the city locking up cars of, say, spurned lovers or annoying bosses. The lock doesn't work on unusually thick tires, so some might still have to endure the old removal process.
Yesterday morning, two members of the city's scofflaw team, Trina Guice and Chiquita White, drove around East Baltimore looking for repeat violators. Their white city van was equipped with two cameras perched above the windshield, which feed license plate images to a computer equipped with character recognition software. Plate numbers are matched against a database.
When the computer found a plate with three outstanding tickets, the screen turned red and an alarm sounded. They didn't utter a word when the computer picked up Davis' car in the 500 block of Patterson Park Ave. Guice lugged a boot out of the back of the van.
A few minutes later, Davis came out of his house and discovered the boot. He did not feel like discussing his unpaid fines, or the boot, at length, although he acknowledged that he was racking up tickets because he did not have a valid residential parking permit until recently. He needed to take care of the issue, he said, so he could get to work.
And he did. The boot went on shortly before 11 a.m. and he paid his fines by 11:25 a.m., according to city parking agents. He dropped off the boot at 12:24 at a St. Paul Street collection site.Meanwhile, Guice and White moved on, finding another violator just one block south. The pair boot between 30 and 40 cars a day. "Some days you have good days, other days you don't," White said.The new system is part of an overhaul of the parking division that includes the plate recognition software that went into use last year.
The new tools have even led to the recovery of stolen cars.
Said Yolanda Cason, a supervisor in the parking department: "We've come a long way at scofflaw."
BOOT FACTS
Residents are eligible for a boot if
* They have three unpaid parking tickets
* The last ticket is 30 days overdue
Places where the boot can be returned
* 400 S. Central Ave.
* 300 W. Lombard St.
* 1012 St. Paul St.
