Parking meter fixer had hand in till, police say

Every workday for the past seven years, Paul R. Arsenault made his rounds of Boston's 7,200 parking meters in a fresh blue uniform, carrying with him a special key and the responsibility for fixing his share of the hundreds of meters across the city that are jammed or broken.

But on a cold, clear morning this week, it all came to an end. Police detectives working with an officer from the anticorruption unit confronted him, read him his rights, and took him downtown, removing from his black repairman's van pieces of evidence.

The evidence: 34 quarters from his left pants pocket and 96 quarters and two nickels in a plastic sandwich baggie in his lunchbox.

''He was obviously taking taxpayers' money and shoving it in his pocket, and that will not be tolerated," said Thomas J. Tinlin, acting transportation commissioner.

The dragnet that officials say caught Arsenault in the act of stealing change from the meters he was supposed to repair involved months of observation, a sting operation, and a hunch seven months earlier, when Arsenault was stopped for allegedly driving drunk in East Boston. His vehicle was subsequently towed, and an inventory of its contents included 12 rolls of quarters, a baggie containing more quarters, and a Boston Transportation Department shirt in the back seat, according to a police report of the June incident.

Officers asked him whether such a large amount of change had to do with his job.

Arsenault said it did not and told the officers it was winnings from a card game the night before, the report said.

The drunken driving case was continued without a finding to this summer. But police were suspicious about the quarters and notified Arsenault's bosses in the parking department. The information made them suspect that the $34,695-a-year meter repairman was exploiting a nearly airtight quarter-collection system.

Stealing money from parking meters, it turns out, is not an easy enterprise. Employees who collect quarters from meters have a key to the lower portion of the meter head, which unlocks a compartment that holds a sealed green plastic canister. When a meter is working properly, coins travel down a chute and into the canister through a slit. Collectors can't open the canisters. To collect the money, they use a key to remove the canisters and insert them into a special lockbox that can be opened only at a central location.

But when an object -- like a piece of paper -- jams a meter, the coins can't travel down the chute and into the canister; instead, they get stuck in the top portion.

As a repairman, Arsenault's duties included fixing jammed meters. To do that, he was to open the meters, remove any objects blocking the chutes, report what he'd found to the department, and put the stray quarters back in.

A broken meter can hold only a few quarters. But transportation officials reasoned that, with some 1,500 of the city's meters on the blink at any given time, a coin or two in each can add up.

For a time after the drunken driving arrest, Transportation Department officials merely kept an eye on Arsenault. But they didn't catch him in the act.

''He was being watched and he was behaving himself," Tinlin said.

So they backed off, to let him build up his ''confidence level," they said. On Wednesday, police detectives assigned to the Transportation Department jammed six meters along Arsenault's route, planting coins in each one. Police staked out the meters and waited for Arsenault to make his rounds.

''The officers set up surveillance and observed the suspect who was assigned to repair the meters arrive in the area," according to a police report on the sting. ''The suspect was observed removing the coins from the meters and placing them in his coat pocket."

Tinlin said police also watched him do the right thing with several quarters he found in one of the meters.

Finally, according to the police report, police pulled Arsenault over, stopping his van at an intersection near Chinatown. They discovered $8.50 in quarters in his left pants pocket, plus $24.10 in quarters and two nickels in his lunch box. They also found several plastic bags in the driver's side door of his vehicle, plus several toothpicks and Band-Aids in his lunch box.

''Those are the tools of the trade when it comes to jamming parking meters," Tinlin said, but he added that there is no evidence Arsenault did that.

Tinlin said the sting is part of his push to crack down on meter tampering. Since last summer, Boston police and Transportation Department supervisors have discovered valet parking attendants jamming meters, and they have arrested several drivers for allegedly doing the same thing.

Although the vast majority of the department's employees are honest, Tinlin said, he still has an obligation to monitor them.

''Any time you have human beings with access to money, whether large amounts or small amounts, you have the potential for fraud," Tinlin said. ''So we need to have a strong program of checks and balances, which worked as designed yesterday."

Arsenault, who lives in East Boston, was charged with five counts of larceny under $250 -- one for each meter he allegedly took change from. He was released on personal recognizance Wednesday and arraigned Thursday; his next court date is Feb. 23. As a union member, he is entitled to make a case as to why he should not be fired, Tinlin said.

Francis T. O'Brien Jr., Arsenault's lawyer, declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but said his client plans to fight the charges and to keep his job.

''Mr. Arsenault is confident that when all facts come to light that he will be exonerated," he said.

Tinlin said he met with Arsenault's colleagues yesterday to thank them for their hard work.

''Everybody felt bad for someone who would throw everything away for a couple of quarters," he said.