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Santa Monica Police and KTLA at Odds over Parking Tickets Given During Live Broadcast
Hell hath no fury like a reporter scorned! Police in Santa Monica may be admitting to erroneous parking tickets issued to residents last week, but they are making no apologies for writing $200 worth of tickets to KTLA during a live broadcast yesterday morning.
The station's energetic Gayle Anderson was conducting an interview about "Best Road Trip Cars" in a beach parking lot when she casually worked in a line about receiving a citation as a cameraman panned to an officer writing ticket. "And after you pay your Santa Monica parking ticket, where do you go in this Porsche Panamera?" she asked. "We've paid for parking, I have receipts, but that's okay, we'll figure it out, friendly Santa Monica," Anderson snarked.
Sergeant Jay Trisler, however, says the story actually goes like this: the parking manager for the lot called police after payment wasn't received for several vehicles that had entered. Apparently at 7:40 a.m., the attendant's supervisor asked that the parking spots be paid for -- in response, the news crew said it would be paid by 9 a.m. But at 8:50 a.m., the news crew ignored the attendant when he returned for payment.
An officer that was called to the lot approached a KTLA representative about seeing receipt and permits for the spaces. "The representative walked away and did not come back," said Trisler, who explained that four tickets written around 9:20 a.m. "Although the news reporter stated on the live television broadcast that they had paid for the parking spaces at the time the officer was issuing the citations, the news crew actually paid for the parking spaces at 9:40 a.m., after the citations were issued."
This is the second time in recents weeks where a government agency called out a TV news reporter. Last week, LADWP's Austin Beutner said investigative reporter David Goldstein was withholding information that could help the utility's probe into workers who were drinking and driving on the job -- exactly what Goldstein revealed in his report.
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