MILWAUKEE - A big I-Team investigation found the City of Milwaukee making money off crime victims: car owners struck by thieves then stuck paying big fines. In Milwaukee, the law doesn't just make you register your car, you also have to display your registration sticker. It doesn't matter if the sticker falls off, or if someone steals it. If a parking checker sees your car without it, it's a $50 ticket. At least for now. Dan Knauss' registration sticker was in his glove box, not on his license plate, when he got ticketed and towed. "The parking checker said, 'Well, I know it's registered. I can tell that in the computer,'" Knauss recalled. "So I was like, 'Why are you towing it?'" Same thing happened to Brian Davison down the block, because someone stole his sticker. "I love being in the city, but it's things like this that will end up driving people away," Davison said. Both owners got hit with $50 fines even though both cars had up-to-date registrations. It makes no difference to Department of Public Works parking checkers, because the law requires display. "It isn't the parking enforcement officers' responsibility to figure out why you're not displaying registration," explained DPW Administrative Services Director, Dorinda Floyd, who heads up the city's parking enforcement. "You just have to display it." Even if someone takes it. South side Alderman Bob Donovan said situations like those are unintended side-effects of a law designed to keep abandoned cars off city streets. "It's never been our intent to victimize anybody who's a victim of a crime," said Donovan. But since law doesn't give an leeway, at DPW's request, Donovan recently introduced an ordinance to the Common Council's Public Safety Committee, which would lower the fine for those with current registrations but no sticker to just $15. "Clearly we saw this as a problem," Floyd said. "We're trying to figure out the best way to deal with it, but the law is the law." It's a law which doesn't allow parking checkers to use any discretion. And while the proposed ordinance still won't keep those who had their stickers stolen from getting a ticket, it will take some of the sting out of it. The full council is expected to vote on this soon.