Tatum Sawyer, 24, was not having a good day on Sept. 10, the day that parking permits were first enforced at Mesa this semester.

Sawyer, a pre-med Mesa student who moved to San Diego from South Africa two years ago, had just sustained muscle damage from a running injury and had a brace put on her right foot the day before. Sawyer arrived at school early, armed with proof of her online purchase of her parking permit and a doctor’s note, with the intent of obtaining her handicapped parking permit before attending her first class.

Sawyer pulled into a handicapped spot in the main student parking lot bordering Chasewood Drive. She knew that she would have trouble walking to school with her backpack if she parked at one of the farther lots. She spotted two campus police officers and asked them for their help.

After first explaining the situation, Sawyer asked the officers if they would wait by her car for a few minutes while she obtained her parking permit, so that she would avoid being fined.

Sawyer said that the officers refused her request and warned her that there were many other police officers around who might ticket her.

“Tears started to well in my eyes,” Sawyer recalled. She told the officers that she was alone and had no one to help her reach the parking office.

According to Sawyer, the officers continued to refuse to stay by her car.

Sawyer parked farther away. It took her an hour and a half walking on crutches to obtain her parking permit, and she missed her first class. She said she was still in pain from her recent injury.

Sawyer did receive some help while walking back to her car.

“The people who did help me were the [custodians],” said Sawyer. “They were just so obliging and wonderful and gave me a ride in their van.”

Sawyer maintains that the officers were too concerned with issuing tickets to take the time to help her. She suggests that the officers could have avoided abandoning their duty by having one officer issue tickets while the other either stayed by her car or quickly drove her in a patrol car to obtain her parking permit.

“If our officers are not actively engaged in something else, they generally are willing to let people bend the rules for a short period of time,” said Lt. Jack Doherty of the SDCCD Police. “I don’t know if the officers were in the middle of doing something. Because I don’t have enough details, it’s really difficult for me to judge how reasonable or unreasonable it was under the circumstances.”

According to Doherty, there are several options and accommodations through the Disabled Student Services Program that can be made for handicapped students who need a special permit that do not involve visiting the campus.

However, there is no mention on the San Diego Community College Police Department’s Website of how handicapped students can obtain parking permits through mail or receive special accommodations from the Disabled Student Services Program.

“I’ll bring this to the attention of our parking director,” said Doherty. “It looks like we are going to have to change that.”