Last I looked up, the city of LA makes somewhere around 200 million a year on parking fines alone. There's tons of places in LA where it appears safe to park, but then you come back to find a ticket on your windshield because there's a sign way off in the distance and obscured by a tree. Parking enforcement "officers" are specifically told to never make exceptions, and their little ticket machines are designed so that, once your license plate is entered, the action can't be undone and they are forced to complete the ticket in order to continue doing their job.
