Parking meter fixer had hand in till, police say - The Boston Globe

Parking meter fixer had hand in till, police say - The Boston Globe

Ok, I had to post this. I'll post an exciting weekend recap tomorrow. Anyway, after the 7+ weeks I spent in Cambridge with parking meters, I have an odd interest in them now. Here's the run down of the story. It's pretty complicated to get the quarters out of a meter. You need a special key, and the coins are locked in a plastic container which you need this special pushalong cart/bank to get them out. In the whole process you never see a quarter, but do hear them. Ok, so a lot of people jam meters either by accident or on purpose and they hire a guy to go along and check them all. He needs a special key to open the top and clean whatever someone jammed in, and usually there are a few coins the someone put in the jammed meter but didn't fall into the plastic container. The guy is supposed to clean it out and put the coins back in. This guy in Boston pocketed them. The cops had this whole sting operation going to catch the guy in the act. They even jammed a few meters and put marked quarters in their, but the guy was "good" that day and put them back in the meter. Apparently a year ago he got stopped for a DUI and the investigation began. They found about $30 in his van...

So, I can't believe that the cops would go to such lengths to catch this guy. That's where all the taxpayers money is going. They claimed this guy was stealing taxpayers money, but I can only imagine how much money was spent on cop-time for the investigation... that lasted over year... Granted, stealing is wrong, but just fire the guy! Man o man... I can think of a lot better ways to steal quarters... It's difficult to work with money sometimes. In Cambridge, we'd see them dump huge boxes of quarters in to bags. Even way back when working at Macy's and counting out the cash register at the end of the night. You can help but thinking about ways to just take it. So much money. Ok, maybe just me and crooks. I could never work at a bank, too tempting.