LANCASTER, Pa. — A new approach to combatting illegal parking aims to eliminate the need for traditional parking boots and it just might be the next generation of parking enforcement.
President of Barnacle, Rashawn Allen, describes the product as “a revolutionary, versatile-like smart device.”
The Barnacle is a relatively new tool adopted by the Lancaster Bureau of Police (LBP) more than three years ago and has been used to deter continuous parking violations.
“We saw some new products on the market that we felt could help us better facilitate parking issues within the city,” said Michael Gerace, a detective with the LBP.
Placed over the windshield, the parking barnacle forces violators to pay any of their outstanding tickets before regaining use of their vehicle.
“The majority of the people we’re putting a barnacle or a boot on their vehicle, they owe us a few thousand dollars,” Gerace said.
It’s meant to be cheaper than a traditional boot as well as safer and more time efficient for authorities. The product is made with industrial-grade suction-cup material and cannot be removed without a code.
In the future, “a client could make payment using a credit card, which would subsequently give them a release code, and that client could then return that barnacle to us,” Gerace said.
Law enforcement can monitor whether barnacles are tampered with through GPS, which could result in additional fines.
“They want to track the repeated offenders and in those instances, all they simply need to do is put their name and email address,” Allen said.
“We want people to take care of any fines owed so we don’t have to take enforcement actions for those non-payment fines,” Gerace said.
So far, the LBP actively use two Barnacles when patrolling for outstanding tickets, though they did express interest in purchasing more in the future.