SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A 23-year-old software engineer created an app called “Find My Parking Cops” that tracked parking cops in San Francisco in real time. The app went viral, but the city killed that project in four hours.
Engineer Riley Walz says he loves data and that his new app was just a big data experiment.
“I’m not out to get the parking cops. I respect the cops and stuff,” said Walz.
Walz doesn’t have a car. And he’s never gotten a parking ticket. But his friends and his roommate have gotten plenty of them.
“I open my mailbox, and I just see those tickets. that’s kind of what inspired it. It was just seeing those,” said Walz.
He decided to create “Find My Parking Cops” app using SFMTA data already posted online for the public to see.
“I’m a huge data nerd. I’m not particularly anti-parking cops or anything. I’m not trying to make a grand political statement. I think this is really cool data to look at,” said Walz.
MORE: Where SF speed cameras are located, how much it will cost you if you’re caught speeding
Walz says his app was supposed to be a tool to help drivers in San Francisco.
“It’s a rip off ‘Find my Friends.’ I was able to reverse engineer the SF parking ticket system so I could see close to real time where parking tickets were issued in the city. And I was making a map of where the actual parking cops were as they traverse the city and issue tickets. In theory, you could use that to avoid them and avoid a ticket,” said Walz.
The app went viral. Walz says it got five million views on X and a couple hundred thousand people visited his website. Within four hours, SFMTA pulled the plug on Walz’s project.
“They changed their site to so I couldn’t scrape the data from their site anymore,” said Walz.
SFMTA released this statement saying:
“SFMTA is transparent about our transportation data and will continue to be. But when our staff’s safety, and personal information of people who have received parking citations, is at risk, we must act on that swiftly.”
Leala Oulalla got four tickets for street cleaning in the past year. Each one cost her $108. She doesn’t think Walz did anything wrong with his app.
MORE: SF not as strict when it comes to ticketing for expired vehicle registrations
“I appreciate him. It wasn’t malicious. It’s just the facts he had,” Oulalla.
“I understand why the city is not happy about it. but at the end of the day, its public information,” said Courtney Butler of San Francisco.
SFMTA says people can still access parking citation data on their public website DataSF.
Walz learned a lot of from his endeavors. He had a leader board feature on his site ranking cops by dollars and tickets they issued.
“I think one officer issued tens of thousands of dollars in one day,” said Walz. “There are some officers that really power through and they issue over 100 tickets in one shift and then others only 10.”
Walz says he’s done with his data experiment and his app.
“I think it’s done. But, it was an interesting couple of hours,” Walz.
We asked Walz what he’s going to do next. He says he’s going to keep working on websites. Last September, Walz said he created “Bop Spotter” in the Mission. That’s where he put a phone inside a box and put it on a pole. He used the app Shazam 24/7 and recorded a playlist of songs people played on the street.
Copyright © 2025 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.
Duncan Meyers, founder of BDJOBSTODAY, shares expert career advice, job market insights, and practical tips to help professionals grow and succeed in their careers.
