The San Diego Police Department is investigating after a viral video emerged that appears to show a city parking enforcement officer ticketing a Tesla — writing a citation minutes after chalking the car’s tire — even though the driver had already paid for street parking. The owners of the Tesl a posted a video from the Dec. 6 incident on social media showing the officer writing a citation. They said he claimed they had been parked on the street for two hours, but they said they’d only been in the spot for less than a half hour. And, thanks to their Tesla’s cameras, they had video that appeared to back that up. Two days later, they sent an email to the city complaining about the officer’s actions. Their parking ticket has since been dismissed. Vanessa Pearce said she and her husband, Don, had spent the morning at Fiesta Island before driving to the East Village to pick up an order at the Izola bakery on Island Avenue. They paid for parking at a meter at 12:32 p.m., she said. But when the couple returned to the car at 1 p.m., they found they had been issued a citation. Pearce went to talk with the enforcement officer, who was still in the area, but he told her that the vehicle had been parked in the same spot for more than two hours. She said that wasn’t the case. “Initially, I believed he was unaware that we had paid for parking, so I offered to show proof of payment,” Pearce said in her email to the city. “However, he stated that he had marked our vehicle earlier that morning between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. and that he was the only officer patrolling the area, so he remembered doing so.” She said she showed the officer a video, captured by her Tesla’s cameras, that showed they had been in Fiesta Island around 12:15 p.m. The officer then took the citation back and said he’d dismiss it with the help of his supervisor, Pearce said. But when she reviewed more of the footage recorded by the vehicle, she said she saw the officer had marked the tire at 12:55 p.m. and within minutes approached the car and wrote the $85 ticket. She subsequently contacted the officer’s supervisor, leaving several messages that she said went unanswered. Last week, she said she met with representatives from the mayor’s office and the police department to discuss the matter. She said the video she posted attracted more than 400,000 views in the first two days it was up, with people commenting on the video claiming they had also been wrongly ticketed. There are 65 parking enforcement officers in the city, and they undergo six weeks of training. Officers are not given quotas on how many tickets they have to issue, said police spokesperson Ashley Nicholes. “The San Diego Police Department takes allegations of this nature very seriously and has launched an internal investigation to determine what happened,” Nicholes said in a statement. “It will take some time to interview everyone involved and review any evidence to determine what did or did not happen.” Nicholes said the employee who issued the citation had been in the job for two months. He is currently working in an administrative capacity, she said Tuesday. Nicholes said drivers who feel they have received a citation in error should appeal the ticket online, following the steps outlined at sandiego.gov/parking. As for Pearce, even though her citation was dismissed, she says she was left feeling disappointed and questioning the fairness of the parking enforcement system. “We’re concerned this may be a broader systemic issue, especially after hearing from so many other San Diegans with similar experiences,” she said in an email to the Union-Tribune. “We were fortunate that our car captured the incident — without that video, we likely would have lost an appeal. “People shouldn’t have to take extra photos just to prove they legally parked,” she added. “We should be able to trust the system and our parking enforcement officers, and this incident really eroded that trust.” ...read more read less