Handicap Parking Only, Unless You’re With The Forest Hills Police

Handicap parking only. You’ve seen the signs, and you’ve also seen the results of violating this command. That is, if you’re the ordinary motorist.

But a police officer in one Texas town was captured violating this basic rule of thumb for a pretty unacceptable reason: he was doing laundry.

The violation was captured by a redditor and quickly got up-voted to the front page Sunday.

“Seriously,” said one commenter, “if he was actually in there doing laundry, that’s the most egregious parking violation by a cop I’ve seen yet.”

Another commenter felt that this was no big surprise.

“Firemen and cops do laundry at the same place I do,” he said. “The firemen always park in the back if they have their truck, or in a normal place if they’re in some other car. Cops park in handicapped. Always.”

As a follow-up, the redditor, who goes by the name of SleepingPanther, confirmed that he saw the officer doing laundry.

“Yep. And there were other spots to park in. I have no idea why he chose that one… other than it was the closest to the door.”

User bobbyjanniro took the issue up with the Forest Hills Police Facebook Page and that resulted in the following exchange.

FOREST HILLS POLICE: “Crystal do you want to offer any details so that this situation can be investigated/addressed? What day and time was this picture taken?”

CRYSTAL: “Most likely yesterday, was posted online 2 hours ago… possibly this morning. I’m pretty sure the license plate in the photo is clear and reads: 108-0850. I’m fairly confident with that information you could find out more with the investigation, who was driving the vehicle at that time etc. Thanks for your time and reply; I look forward to hearing more about the investigation and the result.”

Forest Hills Police later responded that the officer was there on official business, but that that didn’t get him off the hook.

“FOREST HILLS POLICE: Crystal Hayes, We already know the location. They provide laundry service and are a vendor for the city. The black trash bag was full of jail laundry and the officer was there on official business. The problem we have is not that the officer was there, but how he was parked. It is not acceptable to park in a handicap parking space unless he is responding to an emergency. That will be addressed by his commander now that we have the date of the photo and the officer can be identified…. Thank you again for the photo.”

This isn’t the first handicap parking violation the Inquisitr has covered this year, but it is the first with a police officer as the perpetrator.

Do you think handicap parking violations as well as other driving abuses are common with law enforcement? Sound off in the comments section.

[Image via reddit, linked above]