A new website called “Find My Parking Cops” has sparked both fascination and controversy in San Francisco. The platform, built by technologist Riley Walz, allows users to track parking enforcement officers in near real time. The map-based tool shows where tickets are being issued, what violations are cited, and the amount of money collected in fines.
On the site, visitors see pins marking officer locations, lines tracing their routes during shifts, and totals of how much they’ve fined drivers. Common infractions such as street-cleaning violations, expired meters, and hill-parking mistakes appear prominently. For many residents frustrated by frequent tickets, the site feels like a way to finally see how enforcement unfolds on city streets.
Cracking the City’s Ticketing System
Walz developed the tool by reverse engineering San Francisco’s parking citation system. He noticed that ticket data becomes available seconds after it is entered into the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) database, the same site where drivers typically pay fines.
Normally, citations can only be retrieved if someone has the ticket number. But Walz discovered that citation IDs follow a predictable pattern. Since tickets are issued sequentially and grouped in sets of 100, he designed a process that queries the city’s system every few seconds to collect new data.
This technical breakthrough meant that tickets—and by extension, the location of officers writing them—could be surfaced almost instantly to the public.
What the Data Reveals
The site doesn’t just show ticket locations; it also compiles statistics about enforcement. On one page, a leaderboard ranks officers based on how much they fine drivers each week. As of midweek, one officer identified as 0435 had issued over $17,000 in tickets.
Most citations tracked on the site are for street-cleaning violations, reflecting one of the city’s most common fines. Other tickets involve expired meters, parking in tow-away zones, and failing to angle wheels properly on steep hills—a local rule many outsiders are unaware of.
By presenting this data visually, the site makes enforcement patterns clearer than ever before.
Pushback and Workarounds
Walz’s project didn’t go unnoticed by city officials. Within hours of its debut, San Francisco changed how public access to citation data works, temporarily taking the site offline. Walz, however, quickly found a workaround and restored the tool.
As of midweek, the website has been unstable—sometimes working smoothly, sometimes going down. Despite its patchy availability, the platform has already drawn widespread attention and debate.
City Officials Weigh In
In response to questions about the project, the SFMTA said parking citations are an important tool for ensuring compliance with rules designed to keep streets safe and parking space available. The agency also stressed the importance of employee safety and the need to protect officers from potential harassment.
The city has recently increased its parking enforcement efforts. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, this ramp-up is part of an attempt to address a $322 million budget shortfall. For critics, the new website highlights how aggressively the city relies on fines to generate revenue, while also giving residents a way to better understand enforcement patterns.
Walz’s History of Experimental Projects
“Find My Parking Cops” is not Walz’s first experiment with data and technology. He previously created Bop Spotter, a project where he hid a solar-powered Android phone inside a box on a pole in San Francisco. The device captured snippets of ambient music in public spaces, sent them to Shazam’s API, and identified what songs people were listening to. Walz dubbed it “Shot Spotter for music,” a play on the city’s gunshot detection system.
Like his current project, Bop Spotter demonstrated his knack for reimagining public data in ways that blur the line between transparency, surveillance, and novelty.
Broader Questions About Open Data
The rise of “Find My Parking Cops” underscores broader debates about civic technology and open data. Governments often release public information in the name of transparency, but projects like Walz’s show how quickly that data can be repurposed in ways officials did not anticipate.
For drivers, the tool is an opportunity to avoid costly tickets. For the city, it raises concerns about how transparency can affect enforcement operations and employee safety. The tension reflects larger questions about how far open-data initiatives should go, and who ultimately benefits from them.
