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The Goal? Compliance, NOT Enforcement — Frontline Safety Part II

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What does safety really mean for those on the frontline of parking enforcement?

In this second part of our deep dive into frontline safety, Captain Nick Nicholas—an IACP 40 Under 40 award recipient and longtime law enforcement leader—reflects on the risks parking professionals face every day and what it will take to create a true culture of safety.

With clarity and candor, Captain Nick traces the surprising parallels between parking enforcement and policing, making a strong case for better training, smarter systems, and support that lasts beyond the workday.


From conflict de-escalation to emotional resilience, Nick challenges industry leaders to take safety seriously, offering practical frameworks, real-world examples, and a call to empower the people doing the hardest work.


Have your own experience or insight to share?

Reach out and join the conversation at linkedin.com/company/parking-live/


 Topics Covered

  • Redefining enforcement as compliance 
  • Underreported assaults and emotional tolls 
  • Training gaps in frontline parking operations 
  • Empowerment, culture, and decision-making 
  • Public perception and shifting the narrative 


✅ Credits

Parking Live is a production of Modaxo Media Group, passionate about moving the world’s people.

  • Hosts & Producers — Jade Neville and Matt Darst  
  • Executive Producer — Julie Gates  
  • Producer & Editor — Chris O’Keeffe  
  • Associate Producer — Cyndi Raskin
  • Recording Engineer — Patrick Emile  
  • Brand Design — Tina Olagundoye  


⚠️ Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Modaxo Inc., its affiliates or subsidiaries, or any entities they represent. This production belongs to Modaxo and may contain information subject to trademark, copyright, or other intellectual-property rights and restrictions. This production provides general information and should not be relied on as legal advice or opinion. Modaxo specifically disclaims all warranties, express or implied, and will not be liable for any losses, claims, or damages arising from the use of this presentation, from any material contained in it, or from any action or decision taken in response to it.

Welcome to Parking Live. I'm Jade Neville, speaking to you from the UK where I've spent over 18 years working across the parking and mobility sector from frontline operations to national strategy. And I'm Matt Darst, based in the U.S. with a background in public policy, municipal operations, and curbside management, including 16 years with the city of Chicago. Now, if you haven't listened to our first podcast episode yet, featuring Chuck Billows from the City of Chicago, we recommend you go back and give that a listen. That conversation laid the groundwork for today's awesome episode. That's right Jade, because this is very much a part two. We're continuing our deep dive into frontline safety this time through the lens of a small beach town in Southern California. That sounds like somewhere I would love to be right now. Now our guest captain Nick Nicholas, brings a unique perspective merging law enforcement, parking operations, and a deep investment in staff wellness and public education. In both large cities and smaller towns, the safety of our parking professionals is too often overlooked. But as we'll hear today, the solutions start with culture and with leadership. And as always, we welcome your feedback. Reach out to us anytime on LinkedIn and make sure you give us a follow So let's get into it. This is Parking Life. Where the curb meets the conversation. Well Captain, welcome to the show. I'd like to start with your story, really what led you to a career, not just in policing, but the evolution beyond that to frontline safety, especially regarding parking enforcement officers. I'm kind of wondering what opened your eyes to the risks that you saw in policing and how those also impacted frontline enforcement. Sure. Well, thanks so much for the question, Matt. I really appreciate it. I'm happy to share my story. So, just a little background, I kind of fell into policing and it was one of those things where I never grew up knowing any police officers. I didn't come from a family of law enforcement. And, almost on a whim, I decided to put myself through the police academy. And, you know, here I am almost 16 years later, and I've really enjoyed my time in policing. I'm really happy the city that I work for, but again, it was one of those things where you kind of never know where you're gonna end up. And, that kind of transitions into my experience into the world of parking as well. That's kind of the typical parking story by the way, Nick. I think we all have kind of that, oh, we fell into parking story. It's interesting to me though that you saw some similarities between the role of a police officer or the impact that they have on the public and parking enforcement. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think you're right, nobody grows up wanting to go into parking, but from my time in the parking industry now, I realize that once you're in parking, you kind of never leave. And, that's both a little bit scary and very exciting. I think it speaks volumes about the industry as well. But, a couple years ago I was promoted to captain, so that's second in command of the police department. And the chief called me into his office and he said, "Congratulations, Nick. I'm making you a captain. But now you're in charge of a bunch of things that, uh, they really don't make police shows about, right?" So, the records bureau and the jail. And hiring and recruiting and internal affairs and the kind of the, I call it the non exciting stuff in police work, but obviously very important to keep any agency and city running smoothly. Two of those things were animal control, which I knew nothing about animal control. And the other was parking, which I knew even less about. And my city's unique in that all of parking lives in the police department. So I know a lot of other cities, parking might be in the city manager's office or with public works, or community development, and maybe the police department has enforcement. But in my little city, everything parking lives on my desk. So, it was hugely eye-opening for me to take over the city's parking program. And,, again, my city is also unique in that we don't have a ton of crime. It's a very safe community. I'm very lucky to be there. But the biggest issues that we have in town are quality of life issues, and one of those is parking. So parking demands a lot of my attention, and I'm happy to do it because I realize that parking touches everything in a city, from economic development to safety, to traffic flow, curb access, everything kind of comes back to parking one way or another. And that was really eye-opening to me. So, there's a couple key initiatives that I'm trying to work with our city council to get through in my town. And one of them involves implementing paid parking, which as anybody who is tried to implement a paid parking program will know it's kind of an uphill battle. But I set up a Google alert for parking enforcement and I found something that was really shocking and disturbing, and that's just about every week I get a headline in my email that says a frontline parking enforcement person is being assaulted, berated, spit at, guns, pulled on them, beat up, or even killed just in the performance of their duties. So I started going to a bunch of different parking conferences all over the country and asking operators and parking managers and frontline supervisors, what are we as a parking industry doing to help keep our frontline personnel safe? And by and large, I just got kind of shrugged shoulders, or it's all on-the-job training and we teach a little bit of deescalation, but that was about it. And to me that is very alarming because I come fromthe policing world, right? Where there's certain things that I consider day one, basic officer safety, you know, very introductory police academy stuff like deescalation and situational awareness that is never being taught to our frontline parking enforcement personnel. And it seems almost universal. No matter what agency I talk to across the country, we're just doing a terrible job of training our frontline personnel. So I see a lot of similarities between policing and the parking industry, namely that our frontline parking personnel are involved in very high conflict, high visibility roles, yet we're doing a poor job of equipping them with the skills and ability to keep themselves safe. Hi Nick. I'm Jade. I'm in the UK so I've got slightly different experiences, but very similar at the same time, so it is comforting to know that in the US when you fall into parking, you stay there. It's like a black hole. You can't get out it. So I started in parking about 18 years ago as a stop-gap job six months. And obviously that's a very long six months. And my starting role was a civil enforcement officer, which is a parking enforcement officer in the UK. And all those things that you explained that were experienced by the guys and girls that you have working in your teams and that you see those Google alerts come through for happened to me too. You know, driven at by cars, spat at, threatened with knives, all of those kind of things. And, you're right, there's been an evolution of training that's been happening. We're kind of shining more of a light on it now. It needs to be more robust. It needs to be more preventative opposed to reactive in terms of dealing with situations as well. How has your background as a police captain shaped your perspective on the training needs for things like conflict resolution and prevention techniques? Oh, well, I absolutely understand that is a long six months, but it seems like you're doing very well in the industry, so I appreciate that. And,, you know, I think a lot of this knows no borders, and I've talked to parking professionals from the UK and from Canada, and this isn't unique to Southern California. These issues are happening everywhere, so I definitely appreciate your perspective. You know, as a captain, my focus shifts to kind of a more holistic view of the entire city, and that includes our parking program and especially our parking compliance efforts. And one of the biggest things that I'm concerned about is retention and liability. So I found that the more we empower our frontline personnel, the more likely they are to show up to work and have a good attitude and be engaged and excited to be there, and less likely to call off sick or look for other opportunities. So it really boils down a lot of it to empowerment. You know, I do this exercise with people whenever I'm doing training and I ask them, what do you think the public thinks your job is? And for the most part I get, oh, well, we're meter maids, or we're just there to write people tickets or put boots on their cars and ruin their day. But really, their jobs are so much bigger than that, and I don't think that we're doing a very good job of empowering our frontline personnel. You know, I always say that our frontline folks are really, truly ambassadors for the organizations that they work for. I argue that the frontline parking enforcement people have more contact with any member of the public than anyone else in the cities or universities that they work for. Certainly more than the police officers. We're lazy. We don't like to get out of our cars yet the frontline parking enforcement personnel, they're the people who are walking our busy downtown areas and they're tour guides, they're answering questions, they're giving restaurant recommendations. And really, they're truly the eyes and ears of our communities. They know the areas better than anyone else in the city. And, you know, they know if a street light is out or they know if a blade of grass hasn't been cut. They know these things. So it really comes down to empowering them to let them know just how important their roles are in their cities or communities or universities. And if we're not telling 'em that, then they think, they think what the public thinks, right? Where they're just there to ruin people's day. So we need to do a much better job of empowering them and explaining why compliance matters in parking. You touched on public perception and the public view there as well. So, I'm assuming it's the same both sides of the pond in terms of misconceptions that can happen from a public perception perspective. What misconceptions do people have about parking enforcement and how do those misconceptions shape the risks that are posed to frontline teams? That's such a good question. I think by and large, the public thinks that parking enforcement is just there to write tickets. And you know, I think we need to shift the narrative a little bit. And instead of using the term enforcement, we should start using the term compliance because that's really our goal, right? If we had a magic wand and we could make things in parking totally frictionless and touchless, and people wouldn't have to think about finding a place to park or how they're gonna pay, or what apps to download or how long they have to stay, that's the goal. And we should design parking programs that make compliance very easy. And really, when we think about what our job is in parking, whether you're a vendor, an operator, a municipality, a university, or a frontline personnel, the goal is to get compliance, not enforcement. We need to shift the mindset, and we're not out there to penalize people. We're out there to make parking easy as possible. It's how the misconceptions shaped risks posed to staff. So you know, if public believe the misconceptions, IE we're only out there to create havoc and get bonuses and everything else that is flying around out there in the media, well how does that then increase the risk that's posed on our frontline teams? Yeah, exactly. Well, you, we don't want our teams to fall into that narrative of we're just out there to write them tickets and tow their cars. Our job is so much more involved in that we keep cities moving and we keep spaces available in our downtown area. For instance, I can speak for a lot of cities in Southern California is that when you have increased turnover, you have increased sales tax. And that's critically important for all of our communities to survive. You know, government, we're always asked to do more with less and yet we don't really emphasize things that might help create opportunities for business development. Again, a lot of that ties into parking. I do wanna make one thing very clear though, is that we don't police for profit and our job isn't out there to generate revenue for cities. Yes, there is some revenue component from issuing citations, but by and large, our goal should be compliance, not generating revenue. It is funny. So many, even legislators, kind of argue that parking enforcement or compliance, I like that Nick, is focused on generating revenue as opposed to deterrence. And, you know, they really don't understand that these fines are simply meant as recompense for the harm that's been caused to the public through illegal parking. It's not meant to necessarily buffer a budget. That's a really good point. You know, I think it's a lot easier to look at through the lens of policing. Why do we write speeding tickets, right? To change behavior and to get people to slow down. Why do we enforce stop signs? Well, if there's not a police officer there to enforce a stop sign, or a person isn't met with a hefty fine if they violate a vehicle code section, then they're probably not gonna stop. And as much as I think there's good people out in the world, we have to have regulations and we have to have rules. And unfortunately, one of the only ways to get people to comply with these regulations is to slap some sort of monetary amount on them. Again, in a perfect world though, we would have a society where people follow the rules and parking is easy. But until then, we have to do, we have to do our enforcement efforts. What are some simple steps parking officers can take to improve safety? Such a good question. And again, I don't think this is a heavy lift. I don't think this is asking too much for our parking enforcement personnel to start with the safety mindset. And if, unless we, as the managers and operators and team leaders are discussing this every day, then it's forgotten about. Safety skills are perishable skills, and that means that we have to do regular ongoing training. You know, in the policing world, we have to recertify and we have to do a certain number of continuing education units, and in California we have to go through a certain number of deescalation and conflict resolution training every two years because it is a perishable skill. If you're not using it, then you tend to forget it, or it's not in the forefront of your mind. But we have to start with that safety mindset. So it really is in the forefront of our mind every day when we go out in the field. You're exactly right that this starts with situational awareness. Staying alert is your best line of defense. And in today's world, it's so easy to get distracted. I mean, think about all the tools and equipment that our frontline personnel carry. They have computers in their cars. They have cell phones, they have citation handhelds. They have all of these things that distract them from maintaining even just a simple level of situational awareness. Plus think about the environments that they work in. They're in and out of traffic, in and out of roadways. Traffic patterns change. People approach them and most of the time they're not in a good mood and they're upset because they have come to find a ticket on their windshield or their car is getting towed and situations escalate very quickly. So our frontline personnel, they have to maintain a wide field of awareness. Again, it's not asking much, it's just about scanning your surroundings. Noticing when someone's behavior shifts, recognizing some pre- assaultive indicators, and being mindful of hazards in the environments that they work in. One of the things that I always recommend to anyone working in the field, whether you're a police officer or a frontline parking enforcement person, is your attention when you're issuing a citation is completely focused on your handheld, which is just a few inches in front of your face. And the often, you know, the text is really small or you have a small stylus or you're typing on a small keyboard and you really have to focus on the screen and front of you. So what I was trained when I was going through field training as a young police officer, was you write one line of the ticket. Then you look up, scan, look at, maintain a high horizon vision, look to see who's around you, who's behind you, and then go back and do another line of the ticket and then look up, scan again. So again, that's a very simple thing that our frontline personnel can do to keep themselves safe and aware of their surroundings. Now, lemme make one thing clear. I'm not advocating that people become paranoid. I don't want people to go out and be so fearful every day on the job that they think that they're gonna get killed or assaulted every time they step outta their cars or they walk down the street. All I'm asking is that they maintain a slight level of situational awareness higher than the average person. We've all seen those videos of somebody who's so focused on their cell phone that they walk into a pole or walk through a glass window, and it's very funny to watch that, but we cannot have that with our frontline parking enforcement personnel. We have to be aware of our surroundings. So really it starts with building a safer mindset, and step one is maintaining that level of situational awareness. In watching some of your training materials, I was really intrigued by your use of real world examples. You noted that you received these Google alerts on enforcement and violence or conflict. I do the same thing but I get alerts on conflict that stems from people fighting over a parking space, right? And how that leads to a lot of violence, an unbelievable amount of violence. Can you give us a real world example of a specific incident where you saw better coordination averting a potential safety issue? So there was a situation recently where one of our community services officers was monitoring one of our beach parking lots and noticed a suspicious person loitering around one of the pay stations. So again, because I've tried really hard to empower them and explain to them that they're the eyes and ears of their community, they were able to recognize that this person's behavior was a little suspicious. So they radioed that out and our police officers responded and we contacted the individual and we discovered that he had multiple warrants and was in a stolen vehicle. So I am terrified to think of what would've happened if that parking enforcement officer just happened to go up to the car or put a ticket on the windshield, or even worse, began to tow the car when they didn't know it was stolen, or there was a legitimate criminal that was associated with it. So I'm so proud of the fact that my team was able to recognize that, respond accordingly, and that nobody got hurt. That's the type of story we want on YouTube and we want to go viral. Uh, that's great. Yeah. Parking enforcement teams and parking management teams, they do so much more than just issue tickets and it's reflected over here as well in the UK where some of the officers on some of the sites are trained in vulnerability and welfare engagement training as well. So we're actively training officers to be active bystanders. When it comes to things like it could be violence against women and girls, which is a topic that we've been talking about a lot over here as well, and to look out for signs, especially when working in areas like the nighttime economy where you've got nightclubs and restaurants, et cetera, where there could be victims of drinks spiking or being followed, or any of those kind of circumstances or officers are there to try and to help the public as much as possible. And sometimes that goes into actively protecting them, although they're not getting physically involved in incidents, they're trained to look out for certain situations that have an impact both on themselves positively and on the member of public as well. What would you, what would you say to parking leaders who are looking to evaluate their effectiveness of training that they're providing to their teams and like whether that be technology or training in terms of skills and process. What metrics or feedback would you recommend to give to them to look for, to make sure that that training's effective? As far as leaders evaluating the effectiveness of training or technology, really it comes back to data collection and tracking. Recently I was talking to a very large city in the United States and I said, how often are your frontline personnel being assaulted? And they said, oh, well since January we've only had two assaults. And I thought, oh my God, that's incredible. You know, half the year is gone and only two people in this very large city have been assaulted. That's great. I couldn't believe it. But then as I continued the conversation, they told me that every day, five or six times a day, one of their frontline enforcement officers is getting into some sort of altercation with a member of the public. Either somebody who's upset that they got a ticket, is slapping the handheld out of the officer's hands, or they're getting chest bumped, or they're lifting up their shirt and the person has a gun and they're brandishing a gun, or they're getting pushed up against a wall. And to me, all of those are assaults. And, then as the conversation continued, I realized that this hasn't happened twice since January, the way I define an assault and all of those are assaults to me, if not worse crimes, that it's happening 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 times a day. And that's very alarming. So first we have to define what we actually consider assault, and then we have to track that. And if we track it, then we can start making decisions. It's just like anything else in parking. It all comes down to data, right? So, Dr. Shoup's principles of 85% occupancy, that should trigger a different parking management decision. Well, it's the same thing about assaults, although it shouldn't be 85%. Any assault on a frontline parking enforcement personnel should trigger the need to have either ongoing or new training in deescalation and situational awareness. Another thing that you can do is measure citation accuracy and void rates. And what that tells me is that our officers are writing good tickets, they're not being dismissed. How often a citation gets contested? I don't think there's anything that we can necessarily do about that, but from the other stats, we can gather direct feedback and provide implementation changes that make our systems more effective. I think the element of culture is really important, isn't it, as well for in terms of leadership. And it can be seen as some officers will believe being abused, or verbally or even in some cases minor physical abuse, is part of the job. Because it's so ingrained in the culture of this is what you expect doing this job. And that's, I think that leads to an awful lot of under-reporting when it comes to incidents. And we try to track as many as we can in terms of verbal assaults as well, but you can imagine how many times in they happen in a day where it was still having an emotional impact on those officers, and it's still gonna affect them in some way. Yet it's being seen as a day-to-day part the job. So in terms of cultural leadership practices to empower individual officers, what would you, what would you encourage leaders to do in that sense beyond equipment? Jade, you're absolutely right, and you brought up such an important part about wellness and resiliency that I'd like to touch on for a minute. I am so disappointed to when I hear from people that say,"Oh, it's just part of the job. Yeah, getting pushed or getting yelled at or screamed at, or having my ticket book slapped outta my hand. It's just part of the job. We deal with it every day." Well, it doesn't have to be like that. And there's things that leaders can do to help one, shift the mindset, but two, keep people safe so that that doesn't happen every day. If it happens once, it's unacceptable, but if it happens more than one time, then we really have to make some better decisions as an industry. I think another thing that we do poorly in parking is focusing on wellness and resiliency. I can tell you firsthand that being out in the field in high stress, high conflict situations takes a toll on a person mentally and physically. And I don't think it matters whether you're a sworn gun carrying police officer or you are a frontline parking enforcement personnel because your job is the same. And I would argue that it's even more difficult for our parking enforcement personnel because they don't have the same tools that we have. And I think a person is much more likely to want to assault somebody who isn't armed or maybe doesn't have those defensive weapons or training than a uniformed police officer. I recently found a study that I'm happy to share with anybody who asked that looked at the level of on the job stress and PTSD symptoms in a police department during COVID and after the murder of George Floyd. And I really can't think of a more stressful time or place to work for a police department than that. And what the researchers found was that there is no significant difference in the level of PTSD symptoms and reported on the job stress, whether you're a sworn gun carrying police officer or you're a frontline professional staff member. And that's something that I always suspected, but it was nice to actually see that in academia to back that up. So we need to do a much better job empowering our frontline personnel, offering them resources and services to prioritize their mental health and really build the resiliency. Because somebody who gets yelled at every day, no matter how strong of a person you are, that's gonna take a toll on you mentally and physically. In terms of the culture of leadership, there's a lot of things that we can do as managers and leaders to help support our personnel. First, we have to encourage an open dialogue between supervisors and frontline staff. One of the things that I try to do as much as possible is push decision making down to the lowest level. For instance, you know, I've maybe written 12 parking tickets in my life and they've all been on paper. It's been years since we switched to digital handhelds, so it really doesn't make sense for me to pick the handheld that we're using. I'd rather shift that decision down to the people who are actually using them. And they'll tell me what they want. And as long as we can afford it and there's no issues and we check a few boxes, then I'm gonna go with that. It doesn't make sense for me to make that decision. And when you allow people on your team, even line level staff to make decisions and have input, that's gonna empower them. You also have to trust their judgment. And you know, I think this goes back to letter of the law versus spirit of the law. And of course, we can't tell people how many tickets they have to write or how many cars they have to tow. But I tell them that their discretion matters and I support them a hundred percent. If they want to give somebody a warning and that's an issue with them, then I'll always back them up. Or if they, you know, write a ticket to somebody who is a stakeholder or even a city council person, I don't care. I will always back up the decision of our frontline personnel as long as it's legal and ethical, and I think that trust goes a long way as well. The last thing that we can do is create a sense of pride in our jobs. And again, that comes down to empowerment. That comes down to explaining why we're there to do our role, how important it is, and then sharing victories publicly. And I've even written press releases on our frontline personnel who do a great job or, you know, help solve a crime or, you know, rescue a kid that's stuck in a car. I want that good press because you never know when we're gonna. We're gonna need that because a problem is gonna be made. So I see that as a deposit in the Bank of Community Trust, and the more we can create a sense of pride and empower our personnel and push decisions down to the lowest level, the better off our team is gonna be as a whole. I don't have it all figured out. I'm still trying to learn my own role and find out how I can be a better supervisor and manager, but I found that the more collaborative I am with my teams, whether I was a patrol sergeant, leading patrol officers on the weekend night shift, or in charge of an animal control program or presenting to city council, the more collaborative I am, the more people that I involve in decision making it's an investment upfront in time and energy, but it always pays off on the back end to have that work done first so that you don't have to do it later. Nick, I can't thank you enough for joining our podcast and talking about this. I mean, you brought such conviction and clarity to this conversation and this topic, and it's something that's quite dear to my heart as well. And in being, I think on the street for about eight years during that time in my career, I've experienced quite a lot. And then I've managed teams as well who have also gone through those things. So it's something that I'm gonna continuously work to try and improve myself and I'm so glad there's people like you out there doing exactly the same thing and sharing your learnings and perspectives with other people so we can, we can all do that bit more to try and protect our frontline teams as well. Safety is not just a police concern. It's a it's a frontline imperative and no matter what uniform we put on in the beginning of the day. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it. That's exactly right, Jade. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, every compliance officer deserves to feel prepared, supported, safe. And I thank you for really providing us a forum to have this conversation and provide that reminder, not just the public, but to the industry. And if you'd like to explore the resources and training programs that we've discussed with Captain Nicholas, please check out the links in our show notes. Thank you for listening. I'm Julie Gates, executive Producer of Parking Live. This show is hosted and produced by Jade Neville and Matt Darst. Recorded by Patrick Emile and edited and produced by Chris O'Keeffe. Parking Live is being brought to you by Modaxo. Passionate about moving the world's people. You can follow us on LinkedIn, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit us online at parkinglive.buzz sprout.com. Thanks for joining us at Parking Live, where the curb meets the conversation.

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Jade Neville

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Matt Darst

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