SAN FRANCISCO — A viral app that allowed drivers to track San Francisco parking enforcement officers in near real time was abruptly shut down after city officials altered the data source it relied on, The San Francisco Standard reported.
The app, dubbed “Find My Parking Cops,” launched on Sept. 23 and quickly gained traction online, drawing nearly a million views after its creator shared it on social media, according to the report. The tool scraped data from the city’s parking citation portal, allowing users to see where tickets were being issued and even ranking officers by how much revenue they generated.
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By 2:34 p.m., just four hours after launch, the app stopped receiving real-time updates. Walz received an “unauthorized” error from the city’s website and later confirmed that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) had changed the way citation data is displayed.
The app used a scraping tool to rapidly guess and check parking citation ID numbers from the city’s online portal, revealing locations where tickets were being written — sometimes within minutes.
SFMTA spokesperson Erica Kato said the move was made to protect staff.
“Citations are a tool to ensure compliance with parking laws, which help keep our streets safe and use our limited curb space efficiently and fairly,” Kato told the Standard. “We want to make sure that our employees are able to do their jobs safely and without disruption.”
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