How to beat the boot — circumventing the parking cops. An oldie but a goodie.
When the parking-control officers come to remove a boot, the first thing they have to do is unlock the padlock. Since the city is buying about 100 of the monsters, it seems highly unlikely that every boot will have a different key. In other cities, like Denver, a single master key unlocks them all.
That means, of course, that an anarchist thug with a penchant for trouble-making (or a wily hustler with an eye for a quick profit) could easily dismantle and remove the boot from some poor innocent scofflaw's illegally parked car, take the thing home, bust the lock off and pay a less-than-scrupulous locksmith to make up a new key — a key that would instantly unlock every boot in the city.
Of course, the city can always change all the padlocks on a regular basis (although they don't come cheap). But if we know this city, the pirates will soon be making and selling the keys faster than the cops can replace the locks, forcing the taxpayers to pour ever-increasing sums of money into a parking-law-enforcement mechanism that is neither appropriate nor effective for San Francisco.
(Thanks, Klint!)
