Disabled Veteran Plate Not Enough to Avoid a Parking Ticket by Noknoi Ricker

by admin on January 18th, 2010



BANGOR – Korean War veteran Haddy “Phil” Hamm, 76, who uses a walker or cane to get around nowadays, recently parked his van with its disabled veteran plates in a handicapped parking spot at Hannaford on Broadway and went inside to buy groceries.

When he came out, he found a $200 parking ticket tucked underneath the windshield wiper that indicated he had parked illegally in the disabled-restricted spot.



“I caught [the police officer] before he left the area, but he wouldn’t back off,” Hamm said. “He said you have to have that blue [International Symbol of Access] card put up on your mirror” to park in handicap parking.



“I told him, ‘That’s bull,’” the Bangor resident said. “I parked in the handicapped parking area and I have a handicap plate. It says, ‘disabled veteran.’ It really teed me off when [the officer] said the plate was no good.”
Hamm took the ticket off his windshield and went directly to the police station. After he explained the situation to a woman at the parking ticket counter, she took the ticket and said, “I’ll rip this up,” he said.




Hamm then made his way over to the Bangor branch of the Maine Department of Motor Vehicles to make sure he had the correct plates. After waiting in line for about an hour, he said, the clerk who helped him told him he should not have been given a ticket, but gave him two blue placards displaying the International Symbol of Access, which is a rolling wheelchair, to prevent any future problems.



He now is using the disability placards, “but it’s put a burden on me,” Hamm said. He is stressed “that I’ll forget” and get another ticket, he said.