Hey, I'm curious city reporter Monica Eng. And earlier this winter, I answered a question about the Chicago tradition of Dibbs. You know that thing where people claim a parking space with a lawn chair because they shoveled snow out of it. What I found is that Dibbs is not technically legal in Chicago, but it has been tolerated by mayors for at least half a century.

This includes Rahm Emanuel, Richard J. Daly, and his son Richard M. Daly, who even sometimes

joked about it.

If someone spends all their time digging that car out, you don't drive into that spot.

But is Dib's really just a harmless tradition?

That depends on whom you ask.

Take this listener who wants to be known as Maria from the north side.

She chimed in to support dibs on my Facebook page.

And she explained that she used to do it in her old neighborhood because street parking was scarce.

It was pretty congested. So

everybody was doing dibs. You know, you would go out there and you would dig out your spot.

And especially when I had little kids, I would stick something there because I needed to get,

you know, into the car with my little kids. Okay, crowded neighborhoods, small kids. I could see

why she might support dibs and not think it was a big deal.

But I wondered if some new information I got from the Chicago Police Department would change her mind.

See, I recently requested car damage reports from the weeks right after three big snowstorms.

And then I narrowed it down to just reports with words

like dibs, shovel, snow, parking. You may see where this is going. What I found were at least

64 incidents of what I call dibs revenge. They included things like assault, tire slashing,

window smashing, and in one case, cutting

someone's brake line, just because that person took a, quote, saved spot.

There was even this one day where cops had to respond to 10 separate Dibbs retaliation cases

...