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A Philadelphia Parking Authority employee was shot with a BB gun in Center City

The parking enforcement officer was struck in the face and back.

The glass pavilion over the entrance to a Philadelphia Parking Authority underground parking lot.
The glass pavilion over the entrance to a Philadelphia Parking Authority underground parking lot.Read moreTOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer

A Philadelphia Parking Authority employee was shot with a BB gun in Center City on Monday, officials said.

The employee, a female parking enforcement officer, was struck with BB pellets in the face and back on the 100 block of North 11th Street around 11 a.m., according to police.

Police said the assailant was seen in a green, four-door Honda with heavily tinted windows. No arrest was made.

It was unclear what prompted the assailant to shoot the enforcement officer, who was on duty.

A spokesperson for PPA said the shooting appeared to be a “drive by,” and that the employee was not in the process of issuing a ticket when she was attacked. The incident is still under investigation.

The assault is the latest attack on the city’s parking enforcement officers who, according to a 2022 Inquirer report, have faced increasing threats of verbal and physical violence while on the job.

That report found threats against enforcement officers had nearly tripled between 2019 and 2021, with those trends continuing into last year. Threats involving guns had also risen during the pandemic, the report found.

“The job is tough,” Carla Evans, a PPA enforcement officer, told The Inquirer last year. “It’s not for the weak.”

In a large number of those incidents, tempers flared over ticket disputes, though enforcement officers said that merely their uniformed presence in neighborhoods was enough to garner threats.