Driver gets false 'revenge' ticket for telling-off parking officer

[harvey007]

Source: KUSA Denver 9 News

A Denver parking enforcement officer took revenge on a driver who called him a "meter maid" by asking a co-worker to write the driver a false parking ticket, 9Wants to Know has learned.

The parking officers then mailed the $150 handicapped parking ticket to the driver late, so by the time he received it, the fine had doubled.

Read more: http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=161606&catid=339

[Hassin Bin Sober]

1. And the parking enforcement people weren't fired? WTF?

I've known a few Chicago cops who bragged about doing the same.

[frazzled]

2. Oh, I can one-up that story, big time

This was back in 1974, in New York City. We had just gotten married and were packing up to leave NYC for graduate school across the country. (Sorry, this is going to take a bit of setting up.) A last-minute errand involved having to return several dishes to Bloomingdale's that had arrived broken in a set my office-mates had given us for a wedding present. So ... my husband drives me way uptown to run in quickly and make the exchange, which was waiting there for me by prearrangement. He sees a bunch of private limos idling in front of the store while their mistresses are inside, so he pulls up behind them in his beat-up 1968 Saab and waits while I do my five-minute thing.

I come down and my husband is holding a ticket and scratching his head. A policeman had come up and told him to move. My husband said, "but officer, the other cars are here idling." The officer repeated, move. "Well, what's the law?" my husband asks. The response was priceless: "I am the law," he said ... and pulled out a ticket book. It was a CRIMINAL ticket that required an in-person appearance in CRIMINAL court three or four months hence--when we'd be poor grad students halfway across the country.

When we got home, we knocked on the door of a lawyer who lived in our building. He looked at it and looked at it and said, "Failure to Comply ... I've never heard of that." He looked through all his criminal code books and couldn't find it either. But he tells us we absolutely must show up in criminal court or a summons will be issued for my husband's arrest, and he will have a record and never get a government research grant or anything. Yowzah!

So the next day, my husband calls the court to find out what this charge is and to try to see if he can get the date moved up. They don't know what it is and they won't move the date. (I've married a felon, after all.) FInally, after six hours of phone calls, we finally get someone somewhere who tells us: "Failure to Comply ... that's a traffic violation; go to traffic court at any time."

My husband rushed down there like a bolt of lightning, pleaded guilty, and paid a $15 fine. The whole thing took five minutes. We moved to Chicago.

That was one vindictive son-of-a-bitch cop. If we had not been so persistent, we would have had to spend a small fortune to fly back to New York and pay for a lawyer to appear in criminal court for a charge that was not even real. If my husband hadn't been so persistent on the phone all day, it would have happened, too. Needless to say, he never questions policemen anymore. But then, he doesn't have a mane of long hair anymore, either.

[Javaman]

7. 1974? sounds like the cop was baby sitting mafia/city hall meeting.

back then asshole crooked cops thought they wrote the laws. (for a time, they did just that)

[Hassin Bin Sober]

9. You mean they still don't? Now it's called "disorderly conduct" Ask Skip Gates.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

8. I know some Chicago cops through friends so I sometimes end up crossing paths with them.

One kid told me how some "black guy", or "mule" as they sometimes call them, smarted off to him while he was doing traffic duty. So he wrote him 9 or 10 violations for things like "no tags" , "broken tail light" etc. and threw the violator's copy in the trash. That way, the guy would get the notices two weeks later just prior to contest or pay dates.

The one copper I knew and kind of liked I don't talk to since he called me the day before the 2008 election. He told me how the blacks were going to destroy downtown whether "Obami" got elected or not and they had orders to retreat to Comisky park and take their time re-grouping to head back in to the riot. When I called him the next day to rub his nose in the fact that the celebration was nothing but peaceful, he responded with "dude, you have NO idea. The media is covering it up!!"

[xocet]

3. Fortunate Parking Enforcement Officer Survives....

Usually an injury to the Achilles' heel is fatal - thank Zeus that the officer survived:

Brooks says a driver recently drove over an agent's foot, breaking her Achilles' heel (sic). Other drivers have spit on officers, assaulted them and verbally abused them.

"It can get pretty ugly," Brooks said. "If you can go a week without being verbally assaulted, you're doing pretty good."

(http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=161606&catid=339)

[unblock]

4. much of traffic law, and especially parking law, is there to give police the power to be capricious

i once got a ticket for -- get this -- having one of those plastic license plate borders. turns out that in new jersey, at least, they're illegal if they even slightly obscure the tiniest portion of any lettering on the plate.

so i got a ticket because the police officer couldn't see the ENTIRE letters at the very bottom of the plate, even though the words "garden state" were obviously legible. needless to say, "new jersey" at the top and the actual tag letters and numbers were completely unobscured.

i looked up the statute and sure enough, the police officer was correct, it technically is illegal. i'll never use those borders again.

how ridiculous is that?

the plastic border i had said "hook 'em horns". my guess is the police officer was an aggie!

[Bette Noir]

5. I got pulled over a few years ago in a construction zone.

The cop told me I didn't have my seat belt fastened right, and hinted that it would be very expensive for me, if he wrote a ticket. Then he left me alone to think about it. After 20 minutes, he came back, asked me whether I had thought about it, and wrote a ticket.

The ticket didn't say what it was for, and the summons was sort of trial by essay test: I was directed in the letter to tell what had happened, and pay $135 "bail" for them to consider my guilt or innocence. I wrote that I had been pulled over at random, my seat belt had been fastened, and I thought the cop wanted a bribe. The verdict came back, "guilty." I demanded a trial before a judge. When it was scheduled, a year and a half after the initial traffic stop, the bailiff told us all that our fines would be increased by $500 if we insisted on going ahead with a trial, and the traffic cop was standing right there, ready to testify under oath that I hadn't been wearing a seat belt. I chickened out, since I could just forfeit the "bail" I had paid long before.

Ask me again why I can't wait to get out of LA.

[MurrayDelph]

6. In Los Angeles, the parking enforcement is sub-contracted

so, even before they started hitting tickets as a revenue stream (There is now a surcharge for the privilege of having a ticket written to you), they were always looking for excuses to write them.

Several years ago, I was parked in a metered lot. I had my handicapped placard properly displayed on my rearview mirror, so I should not have needed to feed the meter. When I got back from my errands, there was a ticket for parking at an expired meter under my windshield wipers (directly below the placard). I found the Meter Maid (still patrolling the lot), and pointed this out to her. I was still forced to submit photocopies of my placard along with the ticket before they would cancel the charge.

Worse-yet was the time before my Permanent placard arrived, and I was on my way into a Fry's store. A mail Meter Maid saw the Temporary, saw that it was going to expire soon, and asked to see my paperwork for it. So far, completely legitimate behavior. However, once I produce the information, his job is supposed to be over. Several times, I found him shadowing me in the store, as if trying to find "proof" that I was faking it.

I think I want to leave town with Bette.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

10. Chicago leased their parking meter revenue stream to Dubai for 75 years.

While enforcement is still a city function, the meter management company will be hiring their own enforcement persons for the sole purpose of ensuring their own revenue stream through stricter enforcement. How fucked up is that?