Threatened To Be Towed From Disabled Parking Spot With Valid Placard By Commercial Mall Tenant

Location: California

In front of a marijuana dispensary that is in the same commercial parking lot as other businesses - restaurants, retail merchants, movie theater. I am only looking to understand my rights in this situation.

We were patronizing another business in this commercial lot and the only Accessible space was in front of a marijuana dispensary. My daughter has a valid disabled placard and she was with us at the time. Security guard tells us we can’t park in front of the dispensary bc we aren’t patronizing that dispensary. We told him we had a valid placard and he said that didn’t matter because it is a private lot and then tried to say that the dispensary owns the building and the lot. I decided to just call non emergency police to see if they could send an officer out to clarify and possibly take a report. In the meantime two different employees came out and threatened to tow us if we didn’t move our car.

There were no posted signs about restricted parking nor warnings that they would tow. Ultimately the police said they would not come out because they didn’t deal with private parking matters - which in itself I’m calling BS on, but that’s another matter. Not wanting to risk being towed albeit wrongfully and not wanting to spoil the evening by losing my temper, we moved the car. We filed an ADA complaint with DOJ and wrote an email to the landlord (no the dispensary does not own the building). We just don’t want them to keep doing this.