Ames Police Officer Bob Selby got away with parking in a metered spot without having to pay Wednesday morning. While Selby had a visitor’s permit, the permit is not valid for metered parking spaces.

Selby parked in the space at 9:30 a.m., and DPS was notified of the infraction not long afterward. Selby left at 10:10. That’s 40 minutes of illegal parking not caught by DPS.

We are not blaming a member of Ames’ finest for not feeding the meter; after all, how many times have we neglected to do the same?

We want to know where parking services was during this time.

When questioned about the incident, Parking Systems Coordinator Douglas Houghton lamely said all parking enforcement officers were in a fire-extinguisher class.

Is a fire extinguisher needed to check parking meters? We don’t recall seeing any burning parking meters on campus recently.

The fire-extinguisher training was important, but was it necessary for the entire parking enforcement team to be in class at once? Couldn’t it have been taken in shifts?

We wouldn’t be harping on this so much if it weren’t for DPS’s draconian parking rules.

It seems as though they take a perverse relish in ticketing students’ cars. It is particularly aggravating when the car is just a few feet away from a spot reserved for vendors 24 hours a day. When was the last time a vendor was on campus at night?

While we realize parking is at a premium on campus, we think DPS should apply some common sense and — dare we say it — fair compassion when deciding which vehicles to ticket.