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Brass in pocket
We carry the following information for educational purposes only, as Tony Spence knows someone who was involved in investigating Kensington’s parking meter pilferers.
‘First get yourself a parking-meter-opening key – it helps if you are employed to empty or maintain parking meters, you get one with the job,’ he says.
‘The basic method of augmenting one’s income was simply removing the loose coins from the meters; in every meter there would be up to two coins which could be liberated by simply triggering the coin feed mechanism. Then there were coins which failed to enter the coin box and could be trousered. This was in the region of two or three coins per meter.
‘In the Kensington meter thefts the miscreants went a step further and they had keys to open some of the meter cash boxes.’
Kensington’s internal investigation went as far as secretly checking the meters before they were due to be emptied by the staff, to see if any dishonest meter emptiers were giving themselves an unofficial bonus.
‘It is not that many years since I followed a “meter monitor” down a street in Manchester and in a matter of minutes saw him pocket cash from a dozen meters,’ adds Tony.
You wouldn’t want to be stuck behind him in a bank queue, would you?
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