Is the “advertising master” setting a precedent? Tens of thousands of private complaints against illegal parking are received by German municipalities every month. The approach is met with a wide variety of reactions.
Falko Görres routinely stops his bike, takes his cell phone out of his pocket and takes a photo of the delivery truck that is partially parked on the bike path on the busy Mainzer Landstrasse in Frankfurt’s financial district. Later he will create an email at home with the photo and report it to the driver.
Görres sends out private ads like this almost every day, around 70 a month. His motive: He wants himself and others to be able to ride bikes safely. This is not possible if illegal parkers block bike paths, says the 42-year-old.
Other people in Frankfurt am Main also act like Görres; thousands of private advertisements come together every month. A nationwide phenomenon with an increasing trend: numerous municipalities reported on it in a dpa survey.
A nationwide phenomenon
For example, several cities in North Rhine-Westphalia are registering an increasing number of private advertisements, and in Wuppertal and Bochum the number is already higher than in previous years. Bielefeld has noticed that more than half of private advertisements are submitted by an individual.
Several large cities in Baden-Württemberg are also reporting increasing numbers. Freiburg explains that up to 40 people are regularly active, around ten of whom form a “hard core” and report illegally parked vehicles very intensively and almost every day.
A young man who calls himself the “advertiser master” is currently making national headlines about the mass reporting of illegal parking. The debate about him seems to be having an impact. From Erfurt it is said that the number of citizens’ reports has recently tripled: 848 reports were received in March, compared to an average of 261 in the previous five months. According to the city, the majority of the reports in March were from two people: from one person 360 reports were received and another 216. The city is generally neutral towards such citizen reports.
“Additional work for the fines office”
The Berlin police are more critical. Commitment to greater safety on the roads is fundamentally to be welcomed. Incoming reports are also followed up. “However, private advertisements often lack professional knowledge and appropriate objectivity,” says the press office. The information would also have to be complete in order to be processed. “Therefore, the advertisements mean considerable additional work for the fines office.”
The Berlin police point to a court order from the Higher Administrative Court of Lower Saxony from September 2013, according to which there is no right to processing if private individuals act as self-appointed auxiliary investigators. According to the information, 34,300 private advertisements were sent via a corresponding mailbox in the federal capital last year; in 2022 there were around 31,700.
Falko Görres from Frankfurt distances himself from the desire to achieve the highest possible number of illegal parking reports. He doesn’t specifically hunt down illegal parkers, but instead reports those he notices on his everyday bike ride through the city. He doesn’t expect any personal benefit from his actions, says Görres: “I don’t see myself as an auxiliary police officer either, I just want me and others to be able to get from A to B safely.” Parked intersections are also a safety problem for pedestrians, as their view of the street is restricted.
Last year, 54,500 private advertisements were received in Frankfurt, 200 fewer than in the previous year and 15,400 more than in 2021. There is no denunciation here, the public order office said upon request. Not only because there would be no advantage for the person making the complaint. Görres uses online tools such as “weg.li”, which can be used to generate advertising emails to the city from on-site photos. Frankfurt also set up an online portal a few weeks ago to make progress more quickly.
Low processing rate
In the past, many private advertisements remained unprocessed due to capacity bottlenecks. According to city information, the processing rate in the fourth quarter of 2023 was almost 40 percent. Advertisements received via the new online portal will now be processed 100 percent. Everything else is also very frustrating, says Görres, who is a volunteer city councilor for the party. He hopes that his constant approach will have visible effects at some point.
On site, on the street between the high-rise buildings, he points to the cyclists who have to join the heavy traffic in order to avoid the delivery truck on the bike path. When Görres arrived, his driver had continued unloading and brought the delivery into a building. He didn’t let the fact that his vehicle was photographed deter him. There would have been two free parking spaces next to the bike path.
Finally the driver comes back, gets in, raises his middle finger in the direction of Görres and drives away. He almost caused an accident because he overlooked a cyclist to his left. “I have never experienced anyone being insightful,” says Görres. On the contrary, he had already been shouted at and threatened with physical violence. He will report the delivery truck driver for “parking on the bike path with a disability” – he will be charged 70 euros for this.