Sacramento’s most legendary parking enforcement officer gave out 22,000 tickets last year
Few have seen the man who slips through Sacramento, leaving only anguish and a flutter of parking citations in his wake. But many have come to fear and respect Grant Nakamura, the most ruthless parking enforcement officer in the city.
The public servant has become a kind of boogeyman for driving-age denizens of the California capital: To park in the city center is to risk his wrath. No infraction seems to escape him. Nakamura can hear a meter expire in the night the way an owl hears a mouse across a snowy clearing in the woods, and, like the bird of prey, he descends on his victims with breathtaking precision.
Now, data released by the city of Sacramento in response to a Public Records Act request show just how much Nakamura’s legend has grown.
In 2025, Nakamura cited drivers for more than 21,710 violations — about 5,000 more than the second-most persistent officer last year. If every parking perpetrator coughed up the money, Nakamura would have been responsible for more than $1.5 million in fines.
Four parking tickets in four minutes
A representative for the Department of Public Works did not respond to The Sacramento Bee’s requests to interview Nakamura; requests to speak with him about his outstanding work in 2024 were also previously declined.
In the absence of a conversation, the data provide insight into the man. His most common citation was for an expired meter — 14,409 citations in the year. His second-most common citation was for residential parking without a permit — 2,304 citations. But he took more subtle enforcement actions, too. He cited people for being over the line in their parking space. He cited them for alley parking, for encroaching on a wheelchair-accessible space, blocking the crosswalk or parking not quite far enough away from the crosswalk. For Sacramento cyclists, he doled out 36 citations for parking in a bike lane.
The officer seemed to be unstoppable. On June 21, 2025, he wrote his first ticket at 2:28 p.m., for an expired meter on Seventh and H streets. Five minutes later, he was in front of the jail on I Street: meter expired, 2:33. By 2:42, he was by the Golden 1 Center: meter expired, yellow zone, yellow zone, meter expired, over the lines in a parking space. Then five infractions on Sixth Street in eight minutes. He moved to Capitol Mall and caught four ne’er-do-wells in as many minutes. In his first 30 minutes on the job, he slung 11 rapid-fire tickets. Before he signed off at 10:30 p.m., he had handed out 107 citations.
Nakamura didn’t work Christmas Eve or Christmas. But the day after the holiday, he was back at it with 106 citations in his shift.
As rumors have flown about this relentless Sacramento parking enforcement officer, Nakamura has quietly patrolled the streets, outdoing himself. In the last one-year period examined by The Bee, Nakamura cited drivers for 20,361 violations, exceeding the previous year’s achievement by more than 1,300 tickets.
It’s the kind of intimidating job performance that parents might invoke as a scary bedtime story: He sees you at street sweeping, he knows your permit’s fake.
This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 7:00 AM.
