A Lyndhurst PD cruiser parked in front of the department in 2015. Credit: John Mitchell / Lyndhurst PD
A recent post on NextDoor, near the end of March, had most people assuming the original poster was the victim of a scam.

It’s 2:30 in the morning, the person wrote. Lyndhurst police knock on her door and ask her boyfriend to pay off old parking tickets. She asks for proof; the police say it’s “at the station.” Threatened with a tow, the boyfriend, needing requisite cash, drives to the nearest ATM to withdraw $50. The cops follow him.

“Now, I’m not saying we are right for parking in the street,” she wrote, “but our neighbors park on their front lawn. And others park overnight all the time.”

She was mystified why Lyndhurst officers seemed to single her and her boyfriend out, especially in the wee hours of the morning.

“I found it to be an odd practice,” she wrote.

The NextDoor post, which later turned heads on Reddit, drew a barrage of comments sniffing out a possible scam.

“What, that sounds fishy!” one wrote. “Sounds like dirty cops.”

“Hope you called the real police,” said another.

But a fellow Lyndhurst resident chimed in to say that not only was this not a scam, but that it’s been happening for years.

He said that it was 16 years ago when Lyndhurst police knocked on his door. It was 3:30 a.m.

“My wife was terrified. Cash only. Exact change,” he wrote. He drove to a donut shop on Richmond and Mayfield. “This was 2007. Can’t believe it’s still happening in 2023.”

In an interview with Scene, Lt. Steve DeBow of the Lyndhurst Police Traffic Bureau denounced all of the uproar in recent weeks. He said that there were, to his knowledge, no “scams” or impersonators extorting late-night money from Lyndhurst residents, and that such procedures by the actual police have been “standard” at the department for the 28 years he’s been there.

Repeatedly, DeBow asserted that such late-night confrontations only apply to neighbors with “multiple unpaid violations,” and that such violators can pay with cash or check. (Check!) He said that officers use digital license plate readers to scope out  cars for plates with overdue ticket fines and those parked illegally during the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. cutoff.

“We don’t force people to go to withdraw money,” he told Scene on Thursday. “It’s a courtesy we give the residents here. We wake them up, and give them the option to pay the fines owed. We don’t insist on anything—and most people are grateful for that.”

As for why credit card readers aren’t available, DeBow blamed—ironically—the hour. “In the middle of the night? When the court’s not open?”

Unfortunately, for the miffed Lyndhurst folk, the policy isn’t going away any time soon.

“I don’t know that the process needs to change,” DeBow said. “I mean, personally? I wouldn’t want my car towed in the morning. I would rather pay the $20 or $40 than have my car towed. Right?”

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This article appears in Apr 5-19, 2023.

Mark Oprea is a staff writer at Scene. He's covered Cleveland for the past decade, and has contributed to TIME, NPR, Narratively, the Pacific Standard and the Cleveland Magazine. He's the winner of two Press Club awards.