From the archives: When Wilmington residents fooled parking officers

Parking in downtown Wilmington has come with a cost for decades, whether on the street or in parking decks.

Thirty-five years ago, to avoid added costs associated with parking violations, some people resorted to erasing the evidence.

A story in the May 26, 1989, edition of the Wilmington Morning Star highlighted how this worked with the headline "Police thwart ploys to beat downtown parking rules."

At that time, "Wilmington parking officers use chalk to mark tires so when police return to the block on their rounds, they know how long each vehicle has been there," the story reads.

Some found ways around this by "rubbing out the chalk marks or driving the vehicle around the block and then parking it in a nearby space."

After Wilmington police got complaints about the chalk wiping, a patrol officer worked alongside the parking officer and caught some people in the act, who received tickets. Police could have fined offenders for violating a city ordinance, but instead stuck with the $5 tickets to the "surprised and unlucky parkers who thought they had beaten the system."

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: In 1989, Wilmington, NC police were catching parking 'cheaters'