Sharp rise in the number of citizen complaints against parking offenders in Saxony

The number of citizen complaints against parking offenders has increased enormously in Saxony. In the state capital of Dresden, 14,508 complaints were registered by citizens in the previous year, compared to just 5,146 four years earlier, as the city announced on request. The total number of reports fell from more than 211,000 to just over 147,200.

In 2023, the central fining authority in Leipzig received a total of 199,771 reports of administrative offenses for violations in stationary road traffic. Of these, 14,136 were so-called private reports. Reliable figures from previous years were not available.

In Chemnitz, the number had doubled in the past two years. Ad reporting portals such as "weg.li" are increasingly being used. The public order office takes a critical view of these portals. The actual purpose of a citizen report is "undermined" to a certain extent, as citizens are "literally encouraged to report other citizens or their neighbors for violations," it said. It is not uncommon for this to degenerate into a "flood of reports", with those filing reports walking entire streets and reporting violations. In principle, the prosecution of administrative offences is a sovereign task and is the responsibility of the employees of the responsible authority.

The Dresden fining authority neither favors nor rejects such reports. The processing of complaints from citizens is part of its day-to-day business, it said. The principle of opportunity applies to processing. This means that the prosecution of citizens' complaints is at the discretion of the authority. The advantage of submitting reports via the "weg.li" app is that all important data relating to the violation is retrieved. This saves the case handlers from having to ask the complainant when reviewing the case.

In Leipzig, such reports are assessed in a differentiated manner. In many reports, self-interests worthy of protection are pursued. "On the other hand, however, there is also the phenomenon of mass reporting by individuals without any recognizable self-interest worthy of protection being pursued." This is viewed critically by the authority, as not only the prosecution, but also the investigation of administrative offenses is primarily the responsibility of the state's monopoly on the use of force.