The city of Lorain, Ohio, had a parking problem.
It was June 2022 and then-City Councilwoman JoAnne Moon was being flooded with complaints of cars parked on lawns. It was an eyesore, a quality-of-life issue, she told a council committee. Something needed to be done.
And Police Chief James McCann had just the answer: “Hammer them,” McCann told the committee. “We need to hammer them so that they won’t forget that they got caught.”
With that, the council began deliberating an ordinance that would unleash a cadre of six auxiliary officers and sworn officers in late 2024 to blanket windshields with hundreds of parking citations, generating tens of thousands of dollars in revenue, and would turn minor parking infractions into license suspensions.
It was the last in a cascading series of events and decisions, uncovered by The Marshall Project – Cleveland, that led to hundreds of Lorain residents — the largest number of them living in one of the city’s poorest ZIP codes — being stripped of their licenses because of only one unpaid parking ticket and without the required notice.
The foundation for these actions was laid in 2008, when the City Council took the extraordinary step of criminalizing parking violations, which are civil infractions in most other parts of the state and country. And the impact on residents was compounded in 2020, when two judges began suspending the licenses of those who failed to pay or appear in court without sending them the required notice by certified mail.
The final change, stemming from the police chief’s recommendation at that meeting, was an ordinance change that took effect in December 2024 that turbocharged enforcement by deputizing auxiliary officers — generally used for crowd control and court security — to issue the summonses.
While the tickets indicated they would be handed over in person to the parking scofflaws, they were left under windshield wipers. And while a letter was required before suspensions were to be issued, Judges Thomas Elwell and Mark Mihok skipped the vital step time after time.
The result was that from mid-December 2024 through mid-November 2025, when the practice ended, there were over 1,100 cases resulting from parking citations, which led to more than 300 suspension orders, The Marshall Project Cleveland found.
In that time period, the court collected nearly $70,000 in fines and fees, records show.
Sometimes residents only found out they had lost their license after they went in to renew their plates or were informed by The Marshall Project of the action against them.
“This was a hardship on everything in my life,” said Mary Haviland, a ride-hailing driver who learned last year that she had been driving without a license for weeks. “I never got a letter in the mail, or I would’ve gone to court to take care of it.”
Typically, unpaid parking tickets lead to wheel boots or towing and registration-renewal blocks if the tickets accumulate. Some cities send outstanding fines to collection agencies. But few, if any, turn them into criminal offenses.
What transpired about 25 miles from Cleveland underscores what can happen in communities where there are few forces holding officials accountable, where judges don’t follow the rules and where marginalized residents don’t feel empowered to contest the penalties levied against them.
The practice only ended after The Marshall Project – Cleveland was tipped off about the license suspensions and began spending time in Lorain Municipal Court. Soon after, Mayor Jack Bradley put a stop to the auxiliary unit’s ticket writing.
To understand the process, the news outlet attended arraignments for weeks, tracking the fate of dozens of parking cases. In dozens of cases where people didn’t appear, the suspension orders were posted within hours.
The Marshall Project – Cleveland then analyzed several databases to obtain details on nearly 1,300 orders for license suspensions issued after people did not appear in court for parking tickets.
Of those, nearly 350 cases resulted in a license suspension 30 days after people either missed court or failed to pay the fines and fees. More than three-quarters of the suspensions since 2017 were from incidents that occurred in 2024 and 2025.
Additionally, more than 40% of the suspensions affected people in the ZIP code that encompasses neighborhoods on the city’s east side, where the median household income is about three-fifths of the median income in Ohio.
Cassandra Robertson, the director at the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said the judges’ actions in Lorain undermine faith in the system.
“It sends a message that the legal system operates differently for those in power than for everyone else, and that erodes public trust,” she said. “In particular, public confidence in the judiciary depends on the belief that judges will follow the rules, not just enforce them.”
The Fines and Fees Justice Center, a national organization focused on unjust and harmful fines and fees, has worked across the country in recent years to spur legislation that eliminates license suspensions tied to unpaid court fines.
Dylan Hayre, the organization’s national advocacy and campaigns director, said that while it is impossible to know what is happening in every small court across the country, the organization is not aware of any other city where a single unpaid parking ticket could lead to a license suspension. “That seems a little bit excessive,” Hayre said.
RIGHT: DANIEL LOZADA FOR THE MARSHALL PROJECT
Elwell and Mihok declined interview requests. A court administrator would not say if the court took any action — after the practice was stopped — to notify the hundreds of people who received suspensions without proper notification. Mihok retired from the court in December, as he was required to after turning 70.
Elwell is set to retire this year.
Jordan Coughlin, a court administrator, said it is likely some people avoided suspensions by appearing in court and waiving the ticket before the suspension order took place. He did not respond to multiple requests to address detailed questions about how the judges handled the suspensions.
Patrick Riley, the city’s elected law director and chief legal adviser, also declined repeated requests to answer questions about the tickets and suspensions.
Hayre said he is surprised Lorain criminalized parking offenses and that is “not something that seems to be like a widespread trend.” But he stressed municipal courts have one function in the United States.
“Municipal courts are to generate revenue for local municipalities,” he said. “It may not be the intended purpose, but it is how you would define their existence.”
The International City
Lorain, the largest city in Lorain County, sits at the mouth of the Black River and is nestled on the Lake Erie shore, 80 miles east of Toledo and 25 miles west of Cleveland. Its waterfront is a defining asset. Lakeview Park offers a sandy beach, a historic rose garden and views of the iconic Lorain Lighthouse.
Along the main thoroughfare in the downtown core, historic brick buildings are flanked by an active harbor and residential streets with modest homes.
The city, also called the Steel City, developed its gritty, blue-collar identity through steel production, auto manufacturing, shipbuilding and other industrial enterprises — though many of those behemoths are memories of the Rust Belt era.
In recent years, Lorain leaders have worked to attract new employment sectors and repurpose abandoned industrial sites. A recent effort failed to convince tech giant Intel to consider the city for a chip manufacturing plant.
And many Lorain residents continue to struggle financially. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 1 in every 6 of the city’s residents lives below the poverty line.
Lorain is also long on elected officials but short on voters. The city of just 65,000 residents has a 12-member City Council – three more than in Cincinnati, with a population almost five times as large.
Voter participation, by contrast, is paltry. Mihok and Elwell were elected in contested races in 2001 and 2003, but never faced an opponent again. Turnout in their reelections never rose above 34%, records show.
Over nearly two decades, as city leaders passed increasingly stringent parking laws, there were few people watching what elected leaders were doing or holding them accountable.
Minor violations, severe consequences
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, the same routine plays out in Lorain Municipal Court: Dozens of people pass through two security checkpoints before entering a courtroom on the second floor at City Hall. They are guided through screening to attend criminal arraignments for offenses like theft, possession of drug paraphernalia and driving while intoxicated — but also parking on a lawn.
After passing through metal detectors, people take seats on long wooden benches: elderly residents alongside mothers with children and strollers, and others dressed in medical scrubs, or factory uniforms and steel-toed boots. A security officer snaps steady reminders: Remove your hat, put your phone away.
While people are often anxious to get the hearings started on time, the judges are not always prompt.
On two occasions in recent months, Elwell arrived an hour late, prompting whispers from some attendees, many of whom skipped or left work to be there. At one hearing, Elwell offered an explanation: He “got delayed at his doctor.”
His comment drew sighs and headshakes from the gallery.
Parking tickets became an industry in Lorain in 2008, when the City Council passed an ordinance that criminalized all parking infractions, making them minor misdemeanors, and stated people will be notified by the U.S. Mail and ordered to court if they do not pay within 72 hours.
In a 2008 memo to the City Council, Mark Provenza, then law director, argued for tougher penalties, noting the city’s parking laws were weaker than state law and lagged behind other Lorain County cities. He also pointed out the code lacked any provision to issue court summonses to violators who did not pay fines in a specified time.
A 2019 ordinance update raised parking fines to $50 if paid within 72 hours, and $100 if paid after 72 hours. The legislation also stated that people who did not pay within 72 hours should be notified by certified mail and ordered to appear in court. The only other penalty addressed was that vehicles would be impounded after a third violation.
After Moon, the councilwoman, raised concerns in 2022, the City Council passed another change in 2024 to allow a group of auxiliary officers to issue more types of parking violations beyond handicap parking.
Even then, the law required the judges to send a certified notice to those who didn’t appear — a step the judges in Lorain skipped.
The suspensions began ramping up just before a new Ohio law took effect, in April 2025, that lifted driver’s license suspensions for tens of thousands of people with unpaid court fines and fees, some of which stretched back years.
Triggered by a Marshall Project – Cleveland investigation, the law barred courts from continuing to issue license suspensions when drivers don’t pay a court fine or fee.
But that law did not ban suspensions for when people fail to appear in court. That is the mechanism the Lorain Municipal Court used to set up residents for license suspensions if they ignored the court summons on their parking tickets.
“This is what happens when you allow failure-to-appear suspensions to take place,” Hayre said. “This is how quickly people can fall into that trap.”
The Marshall Project – Cleveland found Lorain is the only one of the state’s 10 largest cities that suspended driver’s licenses for unpaid parking violations. The other nine cities classify the tickets as civil infractions and issue token fines — a much more common practice.
Additionally, none of the other nine cities require violators to appear at criminal arraignments for parking tickets.
While the mayor stopped the auxiliary unit from issuing parking citations, sworn police officers can still issue the tickets. Court records, however, show only a few written since late November. No suspensions have come from those tickets.
Attorneys with The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio Legal Aid said they are deeply troubled about the suspensions. The convictions result in negative collateral consequences for those affected, including barriers to housing, employment, education and income, they said in a statement.
“We cannot expect our communities to grow and thrive when we impose unnecessary obstacles like those created by criminalizing parking violations,” the statement said.
Bradley, the mayor and a longtime defense attorney, said residents should have been notified before suspensions occurred. He also cautioned they have a responsibility to not ignore the tickets.
“When the City Council passes an ordinance, we need to make sure the judges, police and auxiliary police follow the law,” Bradley said. “It is too bad the law was not followed.”
A Lorain City Council member said she was surprised the longtime judges veered from the law and questioned the need to suspend licenses over one parking ticket.
“If council passed an ordinance that required a certified letter be sent, then it should be followed,” Councilwoman Victoria Kempton said. “Nobody is above the law, including judges.”
Kempton said she is “unfortunately not surprised” that suspensions disproportionately hurt the city’s Black and Brown communities, adding, “That is not acceptable.” She called on city leaders to make changes to prevent abuses if the ticket writing resumes.
“Issuing tickets like Halloween candy”
The Marshall Project – Cleveland talked to more than 50 people in packed courtrooms over several months about their citations and suspensions.
Many residents appeared angry about missing work for such minor infractions as parking on a lawn. Several called the suspension practice an open secret and said they had no power to fight the criminal justice system.
Carmisha Bell moved to Lorain in 2024. In November, she parked two tires on the grass, fearing speeding drivers would hit her truck. She soon found a ticket on the windshield.
On a Lorain Facebook page, Bell posted a video after appearing in court. She told viewers she did not know about the parking ordinances and that she had to take her baby to the hearing, where he vomited in the courtroom.
Nearly 100 people commented on the video, calling the ticket practice a “money grab” and saying the city put up no-parking signs on streets without driveways.
“If you gotta set up a payment plan, he said it’s going to charge you more,” Bell replied to one commenter about Elwell. “They are issuing tickets out like Halloween candy.”
Reflecting on her ticket and hearing the judges did not follow the law, Bell said Elwell and Mihok should be held accountable like the people who received citations.
“Just because authority figures have more power doesn’t mean they get to abuse it,” Bell said.
Francisco Rodriguez did not know his license was suspended for parking his truck on his lawn until he tried renewing the license plates for last winter.
“It really irritated me,” Rodriguez told The Marshall Project – Cleveland outside the courtroom. “It was very expensive to suspend my license for a parking ticket.”
Haviland, the ride-hailing driver, received the citation after her son-in-law moved her car onto the lawn area but did not tell her about it, she said.
Weeks later, the judge dismissed the citation, reinstated her license without fees and did the same for several others that day, after The Marshall Project – Cleveland exposed the improper suspensions.
“They should be fined like everybody else,” Haviland said about the judges. “My license means everything to me.”
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project – Cleveland, a nonprofit news team covering Ohio’s criminal justice systems. Sign up for their Cleveland newsletter and Facebook Group, and follow The Marshall Project on Instagram, Reddit and YouTube.