Marcus Frowley is a parking enforcement officer in Halifax.

His job is writing parking tickets, and he says he's usually able to do it without much interference until now.

On Monday afternoon, he called police alleging he had been assaulted.

“As I was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, the individual actually ran back, grabbed onto me, tore the ticket from me,” Frowley said.

Police found the alleged assailant and charged him with assault, theft and possession.

“This is a very serious offence,” said Const. Dianne Woodworth of the Halifax Regional Police. “The parking enforcement officer swears an oath, and is considered a special constable, he's doing his job.

“If you want to contest this, you take the ticket and you go before the courts, you don't fight the person in the streets.”

Parking enforcement officers say it happens consistently.

Bill Brandow is a parking enforcement manager. He has his own stories of being assaulted on the job.

“I just walked back to the back of the vehicle to take his license plate and when I did, he jumped out, come back at me, and he threw his shoulder into me and he spit at me,” said Brandow.

The general manager of Independent Security Systems Atlantic, which handles parking enforcement for Halifax, wants people to realize that his employees are only doing their jobs.

“Sometimes it gets verbal, and sometimes it gets physical,” said Shawn Drysdale.

Drysdale says it's difficult to pinpoint exactly how many assaults his enforcement officers have experienced, but he says there have been roughly half a dozen over the past three months and up to 30 since his company took over parking enforcement two years ago.

“Lately some of the incidents involving the public, the nature has gotten worse, but the number of incidents hasn't,” Drysdale said.  

He says windows have been smashed, and once, a carton of milk was poured over a patrol vehicle.

Marcus Frowley says most of his interactions with the public are pleasant.

“I was quite honestly flabbergasted,” he said. 

Frowley says he's frustrated he was assaulted while trying to do his job, and he and his colleagues want people to know it's not OK to cross the line.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Kayla Hounsell