Shocking LA parking-ticket scheme squeezes jaw-dropping sum from drivers

Los Angeles has raked in nearly $1 million by slapping drivers with parking tickets for street sweeping violations — even on days when no street sweepers ever showed up.

A new analysis found the city continued citing motorists despite the fact that many neighborhoods don’t get street sweeping every week. Yet drivers were still hit with the $73 tickets as if the cleaning crews had rolled through.

Over the past five years, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation(LA DOT) issued more than 12,500 of the allegedly bogus citations, collecting roughly $910,000 in fines from unsuspecting Angelenos, according to LA Material.

Looking at the city’s traffic citation data against the schedules and routes for street sweeping in the city, the report compared the location and time data to find what it called the bad tickets.

Budget cuts in 2021 resulted in street cleaning reductions, down to every other week in a majority of spots in the city, despite the fact that there’s thousands of signs banning parking every week due to street sweeping.

Typically, street sweepers hit neighborhoods in the city either on the first and third week of the month or the second and fourth week of the month. 

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The “off week” rule says you won’t get a ticket on weeks when no cleaning occurs.

“LADOT follows the Bureau of Street Services (BSS) street sweeping schedule, available at [streets.lacity.gov], and does not issue citations when BSS cancels or does not schedule service,” per a statement to the LA Times from DOT.

“While LADOT’s parking enforcement officers receive biweekly schedules and assigned routes, discrepancies can occur when scheduled routes are canceled without prior notice.”

“LADOT prepares a bi-weekly street sweeping citation cancellation list to identify and cancel citations issued in error,” it added. 

The city has promised that if a “citation has already been paid, LADOT’s Parking Violations Bureau contacts the recipient by mail with instructions on how to request reimbursement,” per the statement.

When pressed by LA Material about the reportedly erroneous tickets, LA DOT said that it “proactively dismisses any street sweeping issues issued in error” and “sends instructions for reimbursement to motorists who have already provided payment.”

The report noted the department did not provide them with examples of how many times so-called bad tickets were canceled or those who paid them mistakenly, were reimbursed.

LADOT told the outlet the number of mistakenly issued tickets are on the decline, pointing to some 2,000 bad tickets issued in 2025, voiding the “vast majority” of them.

The California Post reached out to the city for further information.