Free because there aren’t any parking meters left. Because they’ve all been stolen.

City officials say crooks sawed off 546 parking meters this year —39 percent of all the meters in the city, at a total loss of $273,000.

Because it happens so often, the city does not report meter muggers to police, said Tenee Hawkins, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works.

Now I wonder if more or less will be nabbed now that everyone knows they don’t do anything about it.

So is there any point in putting change in the meter? If they don’t even enforce the “don’t steal parking meters” rule, is it safe to assume they don’t enforce the “don’t park here unless you put money in the meter, assuming it’s still here” rule? Or maybe we should just put in 39% less money since that much is going to be stolen anyway? We could call it the “ATL DPW doesn’t give a damn, so I’m not going to either” rule.

And here’s the part where I point out that parking meters were invented in Oklahoma City. Oklahoman and proud!

(UPDATE: Apparently the DPW is a model of efficiency in more ways than one.)