By David Rotenstein
NKyTribune reporter
Florence Police Chief Jeff Mallery forcefully defended his department’s parking enforcement practices at the end of the Florence City Council caucus meeting this week. The statement appeared to come out of the blue, yet it was the culmination of several months of one citizen’s public comments and Open Records Act requests for parking ticket data.
“I’d like to address the perception that illegal parking is rampant throughout the city and that the police officers aren’t doing their jobs,” Mallery told the council.
The perception Mallery mentioned arose late last year after resident James Leach began collecting data on Florence citations, especially codes enforcement and parking tickets. Leach’s quest for data and answers began after council member Angie Cable received code enforcement notices about violations at her home.
Cable was elected to the council in 2024. Before taking office, she summarized the council meetings for the Boone County Republican Party. Leach replaced her and he diligently attends council sessions — he’s often the only citizen in the meeting room for caucus and business meetings — and he produces written reports.
In a November 2025 meeting, Cable commented about what she perceived as selective code enforcement action at her home. Her statements followed multiple social media posts that raised eyebrows among other city officials.
She had received multiple code violation notices. Codes inspectors had written her up for having items in her yard and on her porch. Cable suspected that her property had been singled out on her suburban cul-de-sac.
“That’s not how we should be running our city. We should be worried more about what’s going on in our community instead of spending all of this money on code enforcement officers to come around and give us citations,” Cable said in an interview late last year.
Cable said that her husband has parked work vehicles on their property and that people frequently leave things for her on the family porch and in the yard. She sees the importance for codes enforcement, but she also thinks the city’s codes are ripe for review and revision.
Leach wanted to know more about the city’s code enforcement practices. And, he set out to compare how code enforcement stacked up against another type of citation the city issues: parking tickets.
Between November 2024 and November 2025, Leach found that the city issued more than 1,700 code enforcement notices compared to 58 tickets for parking violations.
“If I was to prioritize on one or the other, I would think illegal parking would take precedent over tall grass,” Leach told the NKyTribune.
To support his belief that Florence was letting parking violations slide, Leach began filing open records requests to neighboring jurisdictions. He sought numbers from 16 Northern Kentucky cities. Leach’s analysis found that Florence ranked 14th in the number of parking tickets issued per capita.
He also requested copies of all of Florence’s code enforcement actions. Leach uses AI programs to analyze the data, which he then compiles into detailed spreadsheets.
In January, Leach handed hardcopies of the data he collected to council member Lesley Chambers, whom he asked to review. Chambers told the NKyTribune that she looked them over and gave them to Florence Public Services Director Eric Hall. Impressed by the depth of Leach’s research, she conceded that comparing parking violations to code violations was like comparing apples and oranges.
“Every parking violation we don’t cite,” Mallery told the NKyTribune last December. “A lot of times when the officer gets there, the parking complaint might be gone. It may not be a violation.”
At the council meeting, Mallery said that his officers responded to 57,000 calls for service last year and they issued more 4,187 citations for speeding and other moving violations. Florence also had 198 DUI arrests.
“These are the issues that cause concern and danger to the citizens,” Mallery explained. “We recognize that issues that affect an individual understandably top that concern for that person, but we gotta look at the larger picture.”
Citing parking violations isn’t the department’s default response, Mallery said. He described it as community-oriented policing: “Our officers are not simply just slapping $30 parking tickets on vehicles and moving on.”
Instead of automatically citing a parking violation, Mallery explained that his officers try to engage with people who have illegally parked. “Most often, what the officer does, they run the tag, find out who owns the vehicle, try and make contact with the owner and go up and talk to them and educate them on the ordinances and advise them that they need to move their vehicle.”
Mallery offered some advice to Florence residents: “If you see a parking complaint, report it and we will address it appropriately.”
Leach wasn’t satisfied with Mallery’s statement.
“If the chief is really that defensive about it, there’s probably something there to it,” Leach said after the meeting. “Florence is the second most populous incorporated city in the area and it’s like I said, number 14 on the parking ticket list.”
Leach explained that he has anecdotal evidence that the city is ignoring parking violations reported to the police department. He cited statements by residents in prior council meetings.
“One lady that was beside herself about why there was no enforcement about being able to get out of her own driveway,” Leach said. “I can tell you on my own street that there are usually five or six vehicles parked 24-7 on the street.”