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Citizen journalists flood Post with pictures of camera car's poor parking

The Barking & Dagenham Post scooped a picture-led front page lead after scores of readers sent in photos of a camera car launched to stop irresponsible driving and parking.

This shocking picture of the local council’s state-of-the-art CCTV car was captured by a reader and sent in to the Archant London title.

Other snaps sent in by outraged residents, who are now accusing the council of double standards, included the car parked across yellow lines and sticking out in the road.

Editor Barry Kirk said: “The council hired a Smart CCTV car and gave all the usual quotes about safety.

“The result has been a sort of ‘hue and cry’ with armies of residents sporting digi cameras and waiting for the little droid to do something illegal.

“People keep sending in their snaps when it does something like this front page picture. In the four months since its introduction the car has issued 2,800 tickets raising £67,320.

“We have kept on the case as there are a lot of things in terms of prevention it could be doing and have recently got the council to start sending it to the borough’s schools in an attempt to combat the terrible school-run parking that exists in this borough and something we have been campaigning about.”

Comments

jon buss (05/06/2008 17:33:36)
I congratulate the paper on exposing this classic case of double standards.
We had much the same in Worthing. The Mayor turned-up to open the town’s new “parking shop” – where people go to pay their fines – and plonked her Skoda (yes, it is a Skoda) on the pavement outside the shop, and across a dropped kerb put there for wheelchair users to help them cross the road. I’m sending a picture by email.
Our headline said: “One law for us, another for them”.
Oh, and she didn’t get a ticket.