Courier

Media Credit: Chi Hong Wong New holographic parking passes came after multiple cases of students using self-made fakes.

Starting this winter term, newly designed parking permits have been issued to students in order to combat forgery.

"It's a 484 (petty theft)," said Detective Christine Salandino, and "a criminal charge."

The new style and multiple holograms are more difficult to reproduce illegally.

The forgery problem has been around for as long as Salandino can remember in the four years she has worked for the campus police department.

"The new, really cool hologram is much more difficult to forge," she said.

According to Salandino an average of five forgeries are found each semester and the problem is usually dealt with by attaching a boot to the student's car, and a citation for the student to find when the return to their vehicle. Some arrests have occurred.

"The number of forgeries has drastically gone down," said Salandino.

It is difficult to spot forgeries. Campus police has no way to check student permits directly in cars.

"It's stealing $64 from the school," said Salandino.

The ones that have been caught are the more obvious forgeries with things like cracking paint and slight discoloration when compared to an official student permit.

"Each semester we change the color of the permits slightly, and each semester we find some colors that are slightly off," said Salandino.

There is no evidence to support that the recent California state budget problems have lead to the new permits use to combat any money lost from forgeries.

No students have been caught selling forged permits, which leads the campus police department to believe that the forgeries are done by the individuals themselves for personal use.

There is no way to tell the average annual loss from permit forgery because there is no way to discern the total number of fake permits beyond the few the campus police has found.

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