ALLENTOWN, Pa. — UPS said it's "looking into" an incident involving one of its trucks in downtown Allentown on Friday.
The truck was immobilized by the Allentown Parking Authority, and the incident was caught on video.
In a reel first posted to Instagram, the video dated Dec. 15 showed three APA officers arguing with a UPS driver as he attempted to make deliveries in the 600 block of Hamilton Street.
The video, captioned “APA boots UPS driver for doing his job,” zoomed in to show an orange parking boot on the right front tire of the truck. The boot, also known as a wheel clamp, is a device designed to prevent motor vehicles from being moved.
Laura Holmberg of UPS Global Communications said in response to an inquiry the company was "looking into" the incident.
According to the APA website, vehicles may be immobilized for unpaid parking tickets and may be towed or impounded at any point after. It’s unclear how many unpaid tickets UPS had in Allentown that led to the vehicle being booted.
The UPS driver was identified by several comments left on the post, including one person who said, “That’s my friend since childhood — one of the hardest workers you’ll ever meet. Works double/triple time around the holidays to help out and provide for his family. He’s just doing his job.”
UPS considered frequent parking violators
Calls first made to UPS on Saturday reached a voicemail box that was full and unable to take messages. But numerous reports show their drivers are considered frequent parking violators, many times due to a lack of loading/unloading zones available.
A report from 6ABC Philadelphia in July found that UPS had over $9 million in parking violation fines in Philly since the beginning of 2018, and the company was considered the top parking violator in the city.
A report from NY1 in February also quoted Axel Carrión, the vice president of state government affairs at UPS, as saying the company pays in tickets in New York City “more than the entire world combined. It also makes up about 80% of all the tickets that we pay U.S. domestically.”
In Allentown, the truck in Friday’s incident appeared to be parked in a metered zone in front of Tower 6, and it was unclear if the driver of the truck was ticketed prior to the boot being placed.
A message on the phone line of the Allentown Parking Authority on Saturday said calls would be returned on the next business day.
On Saturday night, Vice Chair of the APA board and current City Councilman Santo Napoli said he was concerned about the situation, and parking authority Chairman Ted Zeller said via email there were "multiple unpaid tickets" and he was working to learn more.
"I do know UPS resolved the tickets and the APA and UPS worked out a better working solution moving forward so this does not happen again," he wrote. "The boot was removed within 30 minutes. Regardless, in my opinion, this was not appropriate action."
Zeller said he would have more information once he was able to "get to the bottom of how this happened. But to me, this is inexcusable. I will also say that Allentown has a delivery vehicle accommodation problem and we have been trying to work on solutions but there are other City departments that need to be involved to solve the problem. It will likely include legislative changes."
Colin Coleman, a local photographer who took the video, said he was unsure how long the UPS truck was parked before APA got involved.
"I was working with headphones on and heard noise for a couple of minutes. Once I realized it was people yelling, that's when I looked outside and saw what you saw in the video," he said.
"They did up taking it off but it was a lot of back and forth beforehand," he confirmed. "A lot."
Anger, outrage at APA this year
In March, Allentown City Council voted to approve Mayor Matt Tuerk’s ordinance to appropriate $10,000 for an analysis of the parking authority. The mayor’s decision was in response to the many residents who became angered and frustrated over what they considered overbearing and predatory practices by the APA in issuing parking tickets and citations.
The following month, the parking authority ticketed drivers as they moved along a city street to enter a parking lot during a food bank distribution.
It happened outside Fuente de Vida Church at 729 St. John St., near Hall Street, in the city’s Fairview neighborhood.
People were outraged and the tickets handed out were eventually reduced to warnings.
