by Abhi Raghunathan, Washington Post
Most people who have gotten to know Cat Crosby over the past few months call her “The Boot Lady” -- if they manage to call her anything civil at all.
Many of nearby business owners are wary of her, to say the least. Just about everyone at the Alexandria Police Department -- secretaries, cops, even top commanders -- is tired of her. Office workers across the street actually boo her.
Crosby knows why and she doesn’t particularly care.
Anyone who parks in her assigned spaces at an office park in the 4900 block of Eisenhower Avenue will continue to get booted. By booted, she means those metal tire locks that incapacitate a vehicle. By booted, she means you have to pay her $25 before you can have your car back.
“She’s tough,” said Jim Bock, a manager of C.D.R. Services Inc., a manpower company in her office park. “She’ll intimidate you.”
The complex Bock and Crosby share is cramped and parking is at a premium. About 150 spaces are split among a few dozen businesses, including several auto body shops. Cars often have to park in the fire lanes.
For Crosby, who works with computers, it’s a matter of property rights and protecting what’s hers.
“Private property is a precious thing,” she said.
This ballet of office-park frustration takes place just about every day now, a spectacle fueled by the aggravations of modern working life.
“It’s become quite a show,” said one of the Department of Defense employees who works across the street and watches Crosby regularly on smoke breaks.
The show begins when people refuse to pay the $25 fee -- baffled that a private citizen can slap a boot on their car and demand money. That means the police are called to calm tempers and explain that Crosby is within her rights.
A few cars are booted almost every day, and the police get involved several times a week. Red signs stating that the uninvited will be towed are posted in front of each of her spots.
Crosby said she is not intimidated by any of the people whose cars she boots. “I will fight for as long as it takes,” Crosby said. “It’s a matter of principle and a matter of respect.”
All of the parking spaces in the complex used to be first come, first serve. But they were allocated among the tenants last summer after some businesses complained to the landlord that workers from across the street were taking up all the spots.
That’s when the troubles began. People still kept taking Crosby’s spaces. So she began towing away cars as well as parking her car behind violators, trapping them. She switched to booting because the towing companies took too long and the police said that her car-trapping was illegal.
“Why should I have to wait 15 minutes to get into my spot?” she said of why she made the change.
Police officers find her efforts to be a regular, consuming pain.
“We’ve been out there too much,” said Amy Bertsch, a spokeswoman for the department. “It has been a strain of resources.”
But Crosby insists that the police do not come over enough. She points to the cars illegally parked next to fire lanes without tickets and the growing number of people who taunt her and get away with it.
She also accuses the police of harassment, saying they help people remove boots, damaging them.
“We are not aware of any situation like that,” Bertsch said.
Crosby said she runs Kiniko Industrial Corp., “a multimillion-dollar company” that does security-related computer work for the federal government and Fortune 500 companies. “I’m so good at what I do that the government comes to me,” she said. “I don’t have to advertise.”
No sign hangs above her door, and a dog often lies just inside. The only suggestion of activity is a small camera trained on the parking spaces; it allows Crosby to monitor the lot while working.
On a recent weekday, a few of her employees worked on computers in small and cluttered offices. Because their cars get scratched with keys if they park in their own spaces, Crosby has to rent a few spots in another lot for them.
Meanwhile, she keeps booting with the same fervor that infuses her screeds against the authorities. On April 19, her persistence led to her arrest.
Instead of paying the fine, a man whose car she had booted decided he could jack up his car and replace the booted tire with a spare one. But Crosby promptly got another boot and tried to put it on another tire. When he approached her, a scuffle took place and he wound up slightly injured, records show. Crosby said he hurt himself by kicking her boot.
The police took her away; Crosby’s neighbors remember the Department of Defense employees across the street cheering that day. The man did not come to court, and the case was dropped.