What we witnessed on a ride-along with a Toronto parking officer

Erin Urquhart has been screamed at, sworn at and even shoved while on parking patrol in Toronto.

“It’s a really good day if no one yelled at me or was verbally abusive,” she says.

But those days are considered rare for Urquhart, who for eight years has pedaled between 30 and 60 kilometres per day dinging illegally parked vehicles.

On Wednesday, Urquhart swapped her bike for a car as CityNews joined her for a few hours patrolling city streets. The windows stay almost all the way up to avoid being spit on, at a time when parking ticket rage appears to be escalating.

“I’ve been called every curse name in the book. And people sometimes, they make it personal. I’ve had people say like ‘I hope you get a terminal illness’,” she says.

Other times, hostile drivers get physical trying to get revenge on the officer affixing a yellow ticket to their windshield.

“I’ve had drivers veer their wheel a little bit too close to me to try to use their car as a weapon to intimidate me,” says Urquhart.

She’s not alone in all but accepting abuse on the job as the norm.

In 2022, 15 parking enforcement officers reported being assaulted. Police have been called to at least 20 incidents so far this year, including three physical attacks in the last month. In one of those incidents, it’s alleged a man tried hitting an officer with his vehicle after getting ticketed.

Parking officers get some self-defence training when they are first hired, but carry no weapons. The focus instead is on defusing situations.

Urquhart has only had to use her defensive training once, several years ago when she was charged at and body-checked by a taxi driver. Police were called, and the motorist was ultimately given a peace bond.

Urquhart doesn’t speculate on the reason for such aggression or the factors contributing to the recent increase in attacks.

But she gets it. Finding street parking is a headache. During our nearly two-hour ride, she hands out nine tickets but tells several more drivers to simply move along.

We don’t witness any aggressive behaviour, and Urquhart is thankful for another one of those rare, good days.

“We are human beings,” she says with a warning: “You will be arrested and charged accordingly if you assault one of us.”