A new parking enforcement unit has been created consisting of four students, according to Longwood University Police Department (LUPD) Chief of Police Col. Robert "Bob" Beach.
These students are currently being trained to enforce parking regulations on Longwood's campus. These students will be employed by LUPD, according to Beach.
“In conjunction with working with the (Longwood) Real Estate Foundation, we have been able to stand up a parking enforcement unit," Beach said. “It’ll be made up of students who will be employed by the university police department.”
According to Beach, the hours will be random but primarily during the daytime.
“They will be roaming the campus, random hours, but generally Monday through Friday from 8 (a.m.) to 5:30 (p.m.),” Beach said. “I would hope that they start working around the first of March.”
The two areas with the most violations, according to Beach, are visitor parking spaces and the Midtown Square lot.
“One of the places they’ll be working is in Midtown Square. There’s a two-hour parking limit there for people to park,” Beach said. “In addition to that, there’s a restriction for students not to park there unless they’re visiting one of the establishments there.”
According to Beach, there are a significant number of violations with the visitor parking spaces as well.
“What a lot of people don’t understand is that we have on average a thousand people visit the campus a week for all types of reasons … Students have a tendency to select those because they’re sometimes open and they’re close to where they want to be, that’s one of the more significant number of violations that we have," said Beach.
Beach said the parking enforcement unit will be uniformed and have tools to help them enforce parking.
“They will be appropriately outfitted in a parking enforcement uniform.” Beach said. “They will be given the appropriate equipment to help us enforce the current and continuing parking regulations on all the campus properties.”
The parking enforcement unit will mark tires and check parking decals the same way officers currently do, according to Beach.
Beach said the goal isn't to increase the number of tickets written. He stated, in general, parking tickets are about $50 and there have been no recent changes to the pricing.
“This is not about trying to increase the number of tickets that are written, it is trying to encourage a voluntary compliance to the parking laws,” Beach said. “Parking regulations are here … to allow for the consistent and appropriate environment for students to be able to get to class, and study and do those things.”
According to Beach, the team of four students went through an application and interview process before being selected and the hope is to create more voluntary compliance to regulations among students.
“The intent is having a visible team of people doing this work, being consistent in that process so that there’s a consistency in that enforcement effort will encourage people to comply with policies,” Beach said.
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