‘Is this a zero or an O?’: Man with valid parking permit ticketed 3 times

Peter Hecht from Denver kept getting parking tickets even though he was allowed to park on the street. The problem happened three times, and it was all because of one letter on his license plate that machines kept reading wrong.

The trouble started with a single character. A reporter named Steve looked at Hecht’s plate up close in a video. “Is this a ‘0’ or an ‘O’?” Steve asked while showing the plate to viewers. Anyone could see it was the letter O. But the city’s automatic readers kept thinking it was a zero. Because of this mistake, Hecht got three tickets even though he had the right permit to park there.

The first two times this happened, Hecht fixed the problem on Instagram. He went to the city’s website and explained the mistake. Both times, the tickets were dropped. But when he got the third ticket, things got much harder. Denver had just shut down its website for fighting tickets. The city was trying to save money and had to let go of the workers who handled these cases. Now everyone had to go to court in person.

Getting help wasn’t easy at all

Hecht went to court to explain that his plate had the letter O, not a zero. At first, the judge didn’t believe him and wouldn’t drop the ticket. Things only got better when someone from the news team came to court and spoke up for him. That person talked to the city’s transportation office. The next day, the judge changed her mind. She threw out the $70 ticket and said the city had to pay Hecht $71 back. But Steve said the money still hadn’t shown up yet.

Other people in Denver ran into the same problem. A woman named Jessica Hosken got a ticket even though she had a receipt showing she paid for parking. She called to fight it and found out the online system had stopped working just the day before. She drove to the city building to argue her case but couldn’t find a spot to park. 

After waiting in a long line, workers told her she’d have to come back to court in 2026. She gave up and just paid the $35. “It’s only a $35 ticket, but it’s on principle, it feels like stealing,” she said. Unlike other drivers who have managed to talk their way out of tickets, Hosken had no options.

Numbers from before the website closed show something important. Out of every 100 people who fought their tickets, 78 got them either reduced or canceled completely. This means a lot of tickets shouldn’t have been given out in the first place. Problems with confusing numbers have tripped people up in other ways too. Denver says it will build a new website in 2026 where people can fight tickets again. 

A city worker named Nancy Kuhn explained they’re using money from higher parking prices to pay for it. The city raised parking from $1 to $2 an hour back in 2022 and also made some fines bigger. That extra money goes into a special account. For now, though, people still have to go to the courthouse themselves to fight tickets, even when they can prove the city made a mistake.