Some weeks ago the municipal police for the city of Granada began a campaign to crack down on people using handicap-parking passes fraudulently.

This came about because of the amount of drivers using these parking passes when they were not entitled to them or because the passes on display were forgeries/out of date.

They made it known on their social-media accounts that they were asking for citizen cooperation in tracking down such culprits; i.e., if they knew of anybody that was using one that wasn’t theirs or were using a Mickey Mouse one, to contact them.

Well, it seems to be going quite well with people reporting cases known to them. The latest cases corresponded to staff at the Hospital San Cecilio who were using them in order to park closer to the hospital

This occurred last week when somebody reported staff at the hospital using passes in the name of their relatives who were entitled to handicap-parking passes. Accordingly, a plain-clothes patrol went round to the hospital parking area to check out if this was the case.

The first case involved a woman who after parking her car showed no signs of having reduced mobility or any medical condition that would warrant having such a pass.

“She told us that the pass belonged to her son yet she was travelling alone in the car,” explained one of the officers. The next step is to investigate to see if the real holder of the pass should have it cancelled.

That same morning they came across a vehicle displaying a parking pass but it was out of date, having expired last year. The police called in a tow truck and had the car taken to the police, vehicle compound. When the car owner turned up to retrieve the car, he or she (it is not clear) told the police that the pass holder (a relative) is hospitalised there, which is why the car was parked there.

The driver, however, could not prove that the owner was a patient in the hospital and ended up admitting that he/she was a member of staff there.

Editorial coment: hospital staff should not need to have to go to these extremes (which are clearly wrong) but rather, adequate parking should be available for them. It doesn’t matter whether they’re a brain surgeon or they clean the toilets there – the hospital couldn’t function without them.

(News: City & Metropolitan Area, Granada, Andalucia)