The Northern Star recently sat down with Roger Swedberg, a Sycamore native, who has been giving parking tickets to people in downtown DeKalb for 18 years.

Northern Star: Parking enforcement, huh? So why don’t you tell us what exactly you do.

Roger Swedberg: Parking enforcement is enforcing the parking in the downtown area … some are one-hour parking, two-hour parking and reserved parking. And what I do is go into the areas and mark the tire and when the time limit is up I come back and if the individual still has the mark on the tire they would get a $3 ticket.

NS: Now is there a certain tire you’re marking? How’s that work?

RS: No, the way we do it is mark the tread of the tire. It doesn’t make a difference which tire.

NS: What type of mark?

RS: It’s just chalk … since we don’t have meters in the downtown area, they’ve been gone for over 20 years, that’s the way we do it.

NS: And every ticket you give is $3.

RS: They are $3. They’ve been that for the last 20 some years. And the reserve parking is $10 dollars. Once in a while I will do handicap, which is a $100 ticket.

NS: So most tickets are cheaper than NIU’s?

RS: Yeah, much cheaper.

NS: How many tickets would you say you give out a day, on average?

RS: On an average, about 25 a day.

NS: Working how many hours?

RS: Seven-and-a-half.

NS: So, have you ever given one to Mayor [Greg] Sparrow?

RS: Yes, when he was mayor the first time around I had given him one because he had been in a two-hour zone, and he actually paid it.

NS: Have you ever had anyone try to fight your tickets because of who they are?

RS: Well, I had one individual a few years back who said she was on city business, and I didn’t fight it so we just voided it out.

NS: What sort of response do you get from the community? Because you’ve been doing this for 18 years now, people obviously know you. How do people perceive you?

RS: Some people, especially out-of-towners, will come in to pay a ticket or they’ll see me out on the street. And they’ll say, ‘We came to DeKalb to do shopping or eating or something like that, and this is the way you treat us.’ So you try to tell them in a nice way that we have limits. And sometimes they get irate, but you have to treat them with respect. I actually get more negatives not from the shoppers, but from the people who work downtown. I get people that’ll park in front of their business and they’ll park their car in front of the business and then just roll the car from one spot to another, and I have to explain to a lot of them that the chalk mark is still there. It doesn’t just come off. And if I see the mark on the tire they will get the ticket. But, overall, I don’t get a lot of static.

NS: You don’t get paid by the amount of tickets you give, do you?

RS: No, I’m not on a quota system.

NS: Now you’re from Sycamore, how do you think of DeKalb? How do the people compare?

RS: I grew up in Sycamore and I like it over here in DeKalb, it’s fine and that. But DeKalb is a different town compared to Sycamore. You have a college here, and you just can’t compare the two together. Sycamore is a different breed of people than what DeKalb has.

NS: How so?

RS: Well, ‘cause you have the college here and there’s a lot more going on activity-wise. Sycamore is more of a quiet, family-type town.

NS: Is there one that you prefer?

RS: To live, no offense to DeKalb, but I like Sycamore better. It’s just a quiet town. Nothing against the parties and stuff like that, but as you get older you kind of mellow out a bit.