Apparently more than a thousand parking tickets in Los Angeles city have been dismissed in the past two years, many of them without justification, through a secretive and shadowy "service" known only as the "Gold Card Desk." Apparently this service allows both city officials and the mayor himself to put citation reviews on the fast track and get them to be dismissed sometimes unwarranted. This all came to light during a recent audit by state officials.
Apparently nobody outside of the city government itself has ever heard of the Gold Card Desk or been able to invoke it, and it involves the possession of a plastic Gold Card that is, get this, only distributed to city offices. It has on it a special, members-only contact information (including a phone number) that connects users to a "Gold Card specialist". Members are encouraged to call if they have any "urgent need" to go ahead and resolve a matter of any parking citation that might "require special attention".
This program was started more than twenty years ago in the city, and was more or less created to allow officials and their staffers to speed up the process by which constituents could appeal their parking tickets to officials, and even have fines reduces or gotten rid of. But when the Deaprtment of Transportation was reviewed by soem auditors, they took exception to the program. Basically, city offcials and their lackeys were getting special treatment. So even someone blocking an industrial garage door could be let off the hook through this program.