First or last to obey laws?

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
November 1, 2010

At the McHenry County courthouse parking lot there is a Loading Zone in the west parking lot. It's located near the front doors, and its purpose is clear from the sign. It's for loading or for unloading.

Around 9:30AM there was a black Harley-Davidson in the Loading Zone. Kind of a spiffy delivery vehicle, eh? But then I noticed the Illinois license plate on it: BLU NYT. (Click on the image to enlarge it; then click on the Back button on your browser to come back here.)

To a lot of people the plate might mean not anything, but any motorcycle-riding cop would recognize it as indicating the Blue Knights, a motorcycle group with membership limited to active-duty and retired law enforcement officers. After I entered the courthouse, I asked one of the court security officers (CSO) who enforced the Loading Zone in the parking lot, and he told me, "The Woodstock Police Department."

I went on to the third floor and, after a few minutes, I looked out through the west windows and could see that the motorcycle had been moved. When I got back to the parking lot, a friend told me that a uniformed officer with a white shirt had just moved the motorcycle and hadn't looked too happy about it. I had passed him on foot, and my friend was right; the CSO didn't look very happy.

So the question is, why would a uniformed CSO on duty at the front entrance to the courthouse have parked his motorcycle in the Loading Zone, where parking is clearly prohibited? Was he late for work? Did he want it parked "up front" where he could keep an eye on it from the front entrance? Did he feel "entitled" to park there, because he thought he could do so with impunity? It's a motor vehicle; that's all it is. It belongs legally parked.

Recently I wrote about how cops (and other law enforcement types) ought to be the first to obey the laws, not the last. Had a Woodstock police officer circulated through the parking lot this morning, would he have stopped and ticketed the motorcycle?

Although someone posted a comment to a different article not too long ago that the Woodstock Police Department does not enforce violations on the government center parking lot, it does. The CSOs know it; the City of Woodstock knows it, and its police officers know it.

Whether or not they "patrol" it, looking for violations, is a different story. They should. Whether they do or not, I don't know. Do they ticket stop-sign runners? Handicap parking violators? Parking space violators?

They definitely should not need to enforce parking laws against employees of the Sheriff's Department. I know from experience that cops do not like to ticket other cops.