Parking officer issues nearly $4 million in fines over 5 years

A Toronto parking officer has single-handedly written tickets leading to nearly $4 million in fines for his unlucky culprits, according to the Toronto Star.

Officer 65238, Zulfiqar Khimani, has turned high-efficiency parking enforcement into a science, according to data the Star obtained.

He's issued more parking tickets in the past five years than any of his colleagues, amounting to about 59 tickets a day in a few key neighbourhoods where automotive law-breakers seem prominent enough to keep him busy. So busy, he wouldn't share the secret of his success with the media.

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It might simply be nose-to-the-grindstone hard work. The reporter calculated Khimani's average time on the job at more than six days a week.

He's issued 97,265 tickets between 2008 and 2012 for a grand total of $3,922,725 in fines, according to the story.

His efforts pay off — his name is on Ontario's 2011 Sunshine List of public sector workers who earn above $100,000 a year, along with one other parking enforcement officer.

Four of Khimani's colleagues have issued more than $3 million in fines over the past five years.

Good news for the city about its diligent staff members but bad news for drivers who think leaving the meter empty for that five-minute dash into the coffee shop won't cost them.

Though it hasn't all been bad news for drivers lately. The city will soon put clearer information about how to dispute parking tickets on the tickets themselves and on its website, after an ombudsman report said the city was exaggerating how difficult it was to fight a fine.

Many are also learning for the first time that parking tickets have a grace period, meaning they can be cancelled if issued within 10 minutes of the meter expiring.

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