CINCINNATI — A Cincinnati Parking Enforcement Officer nearly escaped being shot Friday evening on Wyoming Avenue in West Price Hill.
Radio traffic recordings captured the enforcer's first report to dispatchers just before 6:40 p.m.
"There's a very irate man who just shot at me," the officer said." He's gone now."
The victim told dispatchers that he was instructing another man to move his vehicle out of the street when the shooter got mad at him.
"All I did was ask a vehicle to move from blocking the street and he just went nuts," he said, "And then as soon as he pulled past my car he shot at me."
Captain Joe Richardson said the parking officer was simply trying to do his job.
"He wasn't even writing a ticket," Richardson said.
He said the gunman fled north in a small silver sedan with temporary tags in the back left window.
"Luckily the parking enforcement agent wasn't hit," Richardson said.
Three bullets hit the side of the officer's patrol car, but the officer luckily wasn't injured.
"He's all right," Richardson said. "He was remarkably calm and professional through this whole encounter."
One person on scene was put into handcuffs and taken into custody, but Richardson couldn't say what charges, if any, he would face.
"He has some tangential relationship with this, and he was here for it," he said.
The captain said parking officers in Cincinnati have rarely been the target of violence at this level.
"This is the only time that I can recall that a parking enforcement officer being shot at," he said. "I mean, they're just trying to make the city better."
Anyone with information can call Cincinnati Police or remain anonymous by calling Crime Stoppers at (513)352-3040.
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