Ready Denies Inequity Of Cambridge Tagging

Police Chief Patrick F. Ready denied last night that the Cambridge police have been ticketing only out-of-state cars and those belonging to students.

In reply to a letter from Louis Altman 2L, which accused the police of ticketing "only students' cars and other out-of-state cars," and decried "such inequitable, such lawless, enforcement of the law," Ready claimed that Altman had been misled by the Cambridge ticketing system.

According to Ready, the Cambridge police leave no visible sign that they have ticketed a Massachusetts car. Whereas they leave the actual ticket under the windshield wiper of an out-of-state car, they merely take down the license plate number of a Massachusetts resident. The police then check with the Registry of Motor Vehicles to find out who owns the car, and send him his summons through the mail.

Altman Dubious

Altman agreed that this sounded like a plausible explanation on the surface, but he wondered whether the Cambridge police actually mailed any of the summonses. He claimed to know the superintendent of a nearby building who parked out on the street every night and who, to the best of his knowledge, had never received a ticket.

But Ready maintained that Cambridge residents get their just proportion of tickets. He claimed that the boy from out of state is very likely to find a tag on his car, mainly because he is very likely not to have a legal parking place. "But it's not because he's from out of state," Ready said.

"The college students should be more considerate," Ready continued. "They have no right to leave their cars in front of someone's house or blocking someone's driveway night after night.

Altman felt that the whole drive against illegal parking might be a scheme to get more people to rent local garages. "Most cities ban overnight parking so that they can sweep the streets and remove snow more easily," he said, "but Cambridge doesn't seem to do either of these very often."