Fight them to the bitter end - how far would YOU go? (OT but please read)
 

First off, sorry for posting this in the 911 Tech Forum. I have found the issue below really entertaining and figured that with well over 1000 posts, I am due to have one shoved into the OT forum. Moderators, feel free to send this there as soon as you see this.

Hey - it's Friday.

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So I open the mail a couple of weeks ago to discover a parking infringement notice ($100) for allegedly parking in a no standing zone in front of the local convenience store at 9:50AM on a Sunday morning. I must have been buying bacon, eggs, milk or possibly - baguettes.

You are now asking yourself what's so wrong or unusual with this picture. So here's the drum:

Being the inquisitive type, I call the number listed on the fine and ask the call centre operator why there was no infringement notice stuck to the windscreen of my car (this is the norm in most civilised countries in the world) and on what evidence they are basing their allegations. She is informed that they have a photo of my car. I ask whether I can access this image of the alleged crime.

She says "I don't think so - I need to check with my supervisor if we need to show you the picture or not". It turns out that the local council has outsourced the administration of parking infringements to a private company. After a bit of digging I find out they can't find the photo. Apparently "IT" are having difficulty retrieving the image from the archival system.

Now, I am not a terribly aggressive person - but hearing this made me leap out of my comfortable, leather clad office chair. I gather my emotions, loosen the top button on my shirt and thank the call centre operator for it's understanding and hang up the phone.

I smell a rat and start thinking. Surely, this sort of thing cannot happen in a modern society governed by excessive undertones of political correctness, freakish public liability law suits and mind boggling privacy laws. I call the local council responsible for issuing the fine and ask to speak their privacy officer as a way of finding out where my image may be located and who may have access to it. I get put through to the IT manager who flippantly informs me that some sort of new system has been put in place and "this new system should not have been unleashed on the general public without satisfactory results of a detailed impact study".

Now, I do not recall blowtorching the man's toes to get a confession. He just came out and said that on his own accord. Perhaps he too had some reason to want to blow up his grey cubicle.

At this stage, I am convinced that there are more fun ways of spending $100. And then, there is the little niggling issue of principle.

So I ask to speak with the person(s) in charge of local laws for a "please explain". I get put through to a disgruntled sounding individual who sounds like a cross between the toxic avenger and the last person you got ripped off by buying a used car. I politely explain the above scenario and ask him to please furnish me with a copy of the photo. Further to this, I inquire as to who the f*ck they think they are taking happy snaps of people picking up bagels on the f*cking weekend. He starts banging on about the store owner who apparently assaulted the parking officer for stalking / victimising his customers. Seems this is having an adverse effect on the sale of kosher meats. I inform the toxic avenger that this is a matter for the police - and not me. I may have an authoritative and commanding tone, but there are some things best left to the boys in blue.

To my astonishment, the photo arrives in the mail three days later.

Apprehensively, I open the envelope - secretly hoping that the picture does not make my arse look fat. Sure enough, there is a photo of a grey hatch positioned in a no standing zone behind a white delivery van. (Porsche content: my daily driver is a 3.2 Carrera I have a VW Golf used by the good lady wife for shopping / taking kid to school duties).

Now there are several things wrong with this picture:

- The photo is blurry
- It has been taken from the other side of a major road without zoom
- You can't distinguish the license plate (it's about 2mm long in the photo)
- You can't tell that either "my" car and the delivery van are stationary
- The photo is not date and time stamped
- There are about 10,000 identical cars in the area

I call back the toxic avenger (let's call him "Stanley" to protect the incapable) in charge of local council laws and explain the above in a simplified language he can understand. He proceeds to inform me that there are three legitimate methods for the serving and enforcement of parking infringements.

1. A ticket affixed to the front windscreen at the time of the offence (I have had many of these and always cheerfully paid them well within the "due by" date"
2. A photo of the alleged offence
3. The "say-so" of a parking officer

Now, most people will buy point 1. Point 2 is strange, but confronted with satisfactory evidence most law abiders will readily buckle to authority and fork out the greenbacks. But the mere suggestion that the "say-so" of a parking officer is sufficient evidence of illegal activity would be interpreted by anyone with an iota of self respect as a perverse miscarriage of justice.

I ask "Stanley" to provide me with a copy of the governing legislation that sets the guidelines for the above three points. He tells me to go to the local library and look it up.

Library?

Many decades ago a pop culture icon known as "The Fonz" was implicated in a government backed attempt at making libraries popular with the little kiddies. According to legend, he did this by taking out a library membership during an episode of a little known TV show called "Happy days". Some of you may remember this. According to US government statistics, this transparent ploy worked on 400,000 unsuspecting prepubescents who immediately all rushed off and joined the local library.

I was born in 1970 and therefore spared from this misery. (The TV show AND hanging with geeks at the library). But I digress.

So I get back on the phone and call "VicRoads" - the state government department in charge of ANYTHING to do with our streets. According to the web site "VicRoads serves the community by managing the Victorian road network and its use as an integral part of the overall transport system. VicRoads works to achieve improved access, safety and mobility for Victoria's road users." Oh yeah! Now there is a mission statement for the average man.

Almost makes me want to be a part of their vision.

Back to the matter at hand I am due to hear back from the anorak wearing woolly vest clad TWIRP in charge of public access to the appropriate legislation on Monday.

I am at odds with the concept that in this modern day and age parking officers are empowered to the telepathic issuing of fines.

Thank you for reading. I will let you know what happens whether you give a crap or not. I just needed somewhere to vent. Thank you Mr Pelican for providing a potential candidate for a leading role in "Falling Down II" the opportunity to let off a bit of steam in a (relatively) consequence free environment.

Fight them. Fight them with all your worth.

We have the same kinds of BS over here, but I won't go into that now. The problem IMO lies with the fact that more and more 'official' tasks are being farmed out to private companies who have targets and quotas to meet and who usually employ shall we say 'unsavoury' characters to carry out their dastardly deeds.

More and more often I find myself looking back into the depths of my memories and remembering with fondness, my experiences with the old fashioned style Traffic Wardens! How can this be? It just goes to show that we don't realise what we have until we have lost it.

What's next? Robo Cop for real? Any self respecting society should rise up and take arms against a system that allows people to be prosecuted by machines. (I refer here specifically to the likes of automatic photographing equipment aka speed camaras etc).

Must stop now or I'll end up hijacking your excellent thread.

Thank-you Victor in Victoria! http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/clap.gif

Certainly one of the most entertaining (and well written) OT posts I have read in a long time.

Good Luck and hopefully you won't get... http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/pyth.gif

Victor,
I don't know when I have had such an interesting start to a Friday...at least you have maintained a sense of humor:

the anorak wearing woolly vest clad TWIRP in charge of public access to the appropriate legislation

Being a man of principle myself, I say "Stay with it".
Good luck, and keep us posted.
Regards,

Heh heh heh. I love it when them desk popes get to sweat a little. :)

Please don't take offense but you asked for opinions, here's mine:

Was your car parked in a place that was marked as no parking?
If not, fight it.
If so, it doesn't matter what the picture looks like. it doesn't matter who took the picture. it doesn't matter is it was a weekend. it doesn't matter how messed up the computer system is.
if you did something wrong, you should fess us and pay the fine.
Forget about if they can prove it or if you can get away with it.

Accountability has nothing to do with how you got caught or what they can prove.

Thanks everyone for the feedback and encouragement thus far.

Dr. Sam, thank you for your opinion. Naturally enough, no offense taken. Are you a parking officer or someone who fits the profile of a cast member of the above story other than "The Fonz" or myself?

Seriously man, I do not (and neither does the wife or anyone else that may have access to the beater) have memories of parking illegally that day.

And I am sure you agree that we are all fortunate to live in countries in which we are innocent untill proven guilty.

There is no evidence of guilt.

Local councils and government institutions hell bent on raising revenues will be held accountable!

FREEEEEDOM!!!!

Fight it until your last breath. To the death I say, and let the best man/ government authority win!:D Great post, nothing wrong with making those folks actually work for a change.;)

WALLACE, WALLACE, WALLACE!

One more thing:

I will demand that they retreat back to the place they came from and personally apologise to every man, woman and child they pass on the way there for 200 years of opression and misery.

LOL, no I'm not in law enforcement or even a meter maid. If you don't think you did anything wrong then you should fight with all your might just on principle alone. Good luck.

go for 'em. i always do just for the heck of it.

if you gotta pay a fine, make 'em work for it!!

good luck.

it is another form of taxation. but you cannot fight it as you cannot win,,,,because the irony of it all is that you are using your money to fight yourself (your taxes) and since it is not their money they can continue the fight indefinetly or until you go broke. the problem is that the politicians are afraid and will not raise taxes directly yet they want the revenue so they impose these intrusive methods of garnering revenue (speed cameras, loitering cameras?, etc) and pass them off as safety measures....the video and camera salespeople talk revenue enhancement on even par with safety, no offense to anyone.
imho

gary

I'm a very simple person and this seems pretty straightforward. Pay it if you parked illegally. Most people know when they do this. If you didn't, fight the ticket.

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender."

Guess how I vote. I read this every time I think about actually paying a traffic fine. Then I go to court.

I completely understand Sam's point above. If you do wrong, then you should pay (normally). What we are talking about here is not your wrong, but the wrong of the local government. It sounds like someone had a great idea to fill the fiscal coffer, and then implemented the plan without going through the proper channels. If you fight the ticket and go in front of a judge, I think it is likely the ticket will be dismissed summarily, based on either lack of substantive evidence (i.e., blurry picture and lack of proof the vehicle was stationary) or the procedural discrepancies that appear to be present. I believe it is a valid fight, if the fight is against a corrupt and/or iniquitous system.

As long as the general public tolerates the big brother traffic enforcement methods currently in vogue in the US and obviously elsewhere, it's going to get more pervasive. I doubt anyone on this board would dispute that the vast majority of traffic enforcement is done to raise revenue and not to protect the public. These big brother methods are just an extreme example of the enforcement philosophy. I get sick of hearing people say "If you did it, then pay." This is just acquiescing to government control of your life and, IMHO is an un-American attitude. Ironically, though, given where are cars are made, it goes right along with that sheep-like attitude popular in WWII Germany, "I was just following orders." Just because we drive German cars doesn't mean we have to adopt their mentality vis-a-vis unquestioningly (and in many cases irrationaly) following the law. Don't let the government make up you're mind for you. I'm heading out of town for a couple of days so won't be able to respond to responsive flames until Monday. Everybody have a good weekend!

Right on Dan! Maybe you didn't notice that the starter of this thread is not an American, though his actions certainly are. Fight, fight, fight!!! Your rights are like your teeth - ignore them and they will go away.

Great Story Victor, you should be a writer.

I usually respect 'no parking' zones, as they're there for a reason, especially HC zones. You should request the store owner to provide a parking lot? Of course, here in Canada where land is bountiful, every store has one.

Cheers and Good Luck with your $100

While I am not familiar with the laws "down under", I suspect they are similar to our here in the states. The justice system, at least to my simple mind, is based on the concept of INNOCENT until proven guilty. If you allow them to use poor or shoddy evidence now, how can you be sure "they" will not "create" evidence for some more serious charge. The burden of proof is on those enforcing the law, not those charged with the act. To have it the other way is to have a suppressive govenment and we know where that takes you.

Push back.

Demand proof positive.

IMHO a fuzzy picture of some car (not clearly yours) is not proof positive , it's just a picture of some car. They need to show it was your car.

I have been told, since you are allowed to go before a judge on all enforcement activites, even if you are guilty, you should go to ensure you take benefit of any and all aspects fo the law. You can state you feel you are not guilty and let them prove otherwise. That is their job. The use of sloppy work is not acceptable and should not be tolerated.

Once you win, I would also contact your locally elected officials to let them know about these heavy handed enforcement activities and remind them how they keep their job (i. e. staying in the good graces of the electorate). Contacting a local newpaer about this may be another tack if the politican seems to not understand who serves who.

As several others state, freedom needs to be defended at all times, for reasons large and small. Failure to do so, ultimately results in the loss of freedom for all.

Fight the good fight. Good luck.

Great post!
I say shoot'em with their own bullets. Slap the mayor's license plates onto your car, or for that matter, a rental car, and get as many pic's taken that you can in "no parking" zones. Shouldn't be long after that before the policy gets changed.
Good luck, don't ever give up.
Regards,
Gary

There are obviously two sides to this one:
1 - If you are guilty, pay the fine. This is the ultimate in simplicity, and appeals back to my younger days when Do The Right Thing seemed like it made so much sense. Good on ya if ya do this, you're an honorable man.
2 - Regardless of guilt or innocence, the plaintiff in this case has clearly screwed up, and should be squashed for their blatent violation of proper procedure. Failing to fight this ticket teaches the plaintiff that they can deprive citizens of their personal property without anything like "due process of law." Just like the illegal search cases that I defend to the death (and win), the prosecution failed substantially to protect the rights of the accused, ran roughshod over his constitutional rights, and in doing so, sacrificed the whole case.

So I'd say fight the darn thing. They can't take your $100 without due process of law. You have to go to court and stand before a judge to explain that they have to prove all of the elements of the parking offense before they can take your money. Or maybe it's different in Victoria; good luck.

Dan (I'm really not a lawyer, I just act like one sometimes. None of the above statements constitute legal advice, merely the opinions of someone who reads too much.)

Those who have the opinion that "you should pay if you did it," ... please send in $100 in an envelope to the local law enforcement facility each and everytime you exceed 65MPH on the freeway, whether there was anyone to catch you or not.

Fight the system, fight the injustice, fight for your freedom, fight for your rights, fight for everyone else's right, fight until your last breath, fight standing up, fight sitting down, fight laying on the ground, when you lose - appeal it and appeal it some more.

Being of Scotish descent, that's great.

You are clearly an Al Quaeda terrorist. All decent citizens are aware that dissent is tantamount to treason. Be polite to the men in black when they show up at your door.

This thread has been recorded and submitted to PM Howard's office for persecuting (oops) prosecuting this case.

I had the same thought as Yelcab. Respectfully, I'd ask Dr. Gore and others this question: Assume you park and go into a store. When you return, you notice you had parked in a No Parking zone. Fact is, you committed the offense. How lofty do your ideals rise. I assume you would call the local parking authority and insist that a citation be issued to you.

Let's say then that you are driving with bare feet from one beach to another in Washington State (where, by the way, we make the mistake of allowing automobiles on beaches). It so happens that driving barefoot is still illegal in Washington State under an antiquated statute that no one pays any attention to. Let's say that you are pulled over and issued a citation for this and upon further investigation you find that the reason local police knew of your barefootedness via a webcam they had illegally placed in your car. You gonna pay that fine too? You broke the law, dude.

Now, I recognize these are caricatures, but caricatures illustrate that very very very few people are unqualifiedly, fully "ethical" or "obedient." It is always a matter of degree. The question is not whether someone is completely compliant or not. The question is a matter of degree. You might assume I do not react well to righteous indignation.

Again, I submit this respectfully.

I noticed you said the local government had outsourced the operation to a private company. In the city of San Diego, there was a situation where the local government outsourced photo enforcement of stop lights at some intersections. The tickets were about $275 each for being photographed running the light. A group of citizens protested and made a big deal out of it. In the end, what they found out was that the private company had altered (shortened) the timing of the yellow light to be able to issue more tickets - they got a portion of each ticket fine. Because of that, I wouldn't trust any similar system where private companies can potentially manipulate the situation to their profit advantage. FIGHT !!!

Tell em Dan, I agree with you 100%, I have a court date next month.:rolleyes:
Keep fighting the systems that are in place to drain the wealth of the taxpaying citizens of this and other countries!!!!

fight!

well written, i actually have a female friend that talks like you write. too bad she is in boston.

Here in DC, Lockheed Martin gets a sizeable cut of each ticket issued/paid. DC has placed cameras in areas with next to no traffic, so that some unsuspecting motorist at 3:00am on an empty street gets nailed, while known danger spots with rampant red light running have no cameras. They also have cops sit in parked cruisers on I-295 that have radar cameras in them. Lockheed gets a cut of these tickets too. I heard that when you go to court to fight, no cop appears, but rather a rep. from Lockheed comes to explain how their equipment caught you. If I ever get one of these, I will proudly go into court and dress down anyone from Lockheed, ask if anyone in that courtroom saw me commit the infraction or even operated the device that photographed my car and I will walk free. I look forward to this, but the only time I got nailed was while making a U-turn when the light turned, so the camera got the side of my car and no plates.

fight it , if that pic is as blurry as you say,
then it isn't going to stand up in court

i've got beef with a cop that says my drivers licence isn't valid
i now carry 80 pages of european legislation ( i'm belgian with belgian licence and since 2 years living in the netherlands) and making weekly calls to the ministry of traffic and transportation and will keep doing so till they correct dutch law ( euro law supersedes )

for as long as you can fight without having lawyers on your payroll, i say fight it....

I fight every ticket I get...whether I'm guilty or not....*********s are gonna pay for screwing up my day.

Surprisingly I beat 95% of them.....

Can you post the picture they sent you, Vic?

Based on your story, I'd fight it all the way, too.

Hi Adam, I don't have a scenner and left the photo in the office. I will try to take a photo of it and see if that works.

I am about to take the kid to the scene of the crime because we have run out of coffee.

We are taking scooters.

Actually, I'll take the digital camera - he might be there. Stay tuned!

No, I do not send money to the local law enforcement agencies every time i exceed the speed limit.
But I also will not lie and say I didn't do something that I know I did.
By fighting the ticket, many of you are implying that it is all right to lie about something if you can get away with it. I wasn't raised that way.

Everyone has a price, and everyone will tell a lie if the cost of telling the truth is high enough. Fortunately for me that price is much higher that $100. I guess it's a character thing.

If I am doing sumthin' dumb....and get caught....then ya....I bite the bullet. But it's been a LONG time since both those have happened.

It pi$$ses me off when I get pulled out of group of other cars and get cited for the going with the flow of traffic.

Dr. Gore,
it isn't about the fine, it's about procedure. Nobody's arguing guilt or innocent, the question is whether or not the police can deprive me of my personal property ($100) without proper evidence. Let's say that the original poster rolls over and takes the hit for this one -- guilty or innocent, makes no difference. The lesson to the local parking enforcement agency is that they don't _need_ evidence to convict people. Claim somebody did something, and chances are excellent they won't fight it.
That's how traffic enforcement has gotten in our country -- 95% of all tickets go uncontested. People disregard the question of guilt or innocence, and though they may very well be innocent, they won't fight because they feel they don't know how, can't, etc. Little do they realize that if they just fought the ticket, they'd discover that the officer totally falsified the whole thing, hadn't ever been trained in radar usage, had a broken radar device, was drunk, and couldn't remember the events of the day anyway. Somebody has to police the police, and it really has to be the people who catch the police doing stupid things.
Moreover, he's not lying by saying he wants to contest the ticket. He's merely asking the government to prove their case against him, and finding that a) the gov't has no evidence to present and b) it doesn't seem to matter.
So while I respect your ethics and character, I disagree with your legal interpretation of the situation.


Dan

i'll say it again, if a person did not commit the infraction he or she is being accused of, they should fight it as hard as possible on principle alone.
But...........
In the US, if you contest a charge you are pleading not guilty.
If you plead not guilty to a charge and you commited what they are charging you with, you are lying. No matter how you twist it around, that is still true.
I understand your points and I'm not saying they are wrong, they are just from a different perspective than mine. There are lots of ways to get out of taking personal responsibilty for you actions. Rationalizing your actions only help to cover up your wrong doings.
If the police officer was not properly trained to use a radar gun when he clocked you at 75, does that mean you weren't going 75? no, it means you might get away with something you did. you still broke the law, you just didn't get punished for it.

Kind of a philisophical argument, similar to a debate between a lawyer and a preacher.
one discusses proceedures and rules, the other discusses morals.

Ask yourself this:
Suppose you have your young children watching your every move. What ever decision you make may leave them with a lasting impression of how they should live the rest of their lives. Will you still plead not guilty to something you know you did if you think you can get away with it? Is that the lesson you want to teach them?

I can guarranty you that if my father was put in this situation he would tell them that yes, he was breaking the law and would accept proper punishment. He always made it a point to teach my 3 brothers and I the difference between right and wrong.
i guess this is part of my reasoning to spend $700 a month (which is hard for someone like me to afford) to send my two children to a private christian school when I could send them to public shool and spend that money on something more fun like a race car.
I want them to learn more than just the three Rs, I want them to be moral people when they grow up.

I also figure a $100 fine is cheap if that's all it costs me to keep my self respect and maintain my egotistical dilusion that I may be a better person than some others ;)
Based on the actions of today's society I'm probably in the minority on this one.
BTW, I'm only a doctor to the SCWDP, kind of an inside joke. I'm a mechanical engineer by profession.

Dr. Sam,

With all due respect, I beg to differ.

I am not a lawyer but I have sat on juries and through my profession have had to discuss what constitutes evidence in a legal proceeding.

In the "ordinary" world, I quite agree with your position. As a father, I want to show my children the difference between right and wrong but I also want them to aprreciate the enorumus benefits our legal system has to ensure that you are always "presumed innocent until PROVED guilty. As a result of this concept, the defintion of "guilty" and "not guilty" is different than what we have it to be in a non-legal setting.

Under the law, you are "guilty" when the procescuter provides sufficent LEGAL evidence to show you committed the offence you are charged with. Under the law, what constitutes evidence is usually very strictly defined. In our case, suitable evidence can be a photograph. However, they cannot just show a potograph of a car that looks like yours in the area of question. They have to meet certain tests. Without actually reading the law, I would suspect the photograph has to clearly show the license plate to uniquely identify the vehicle as yours. The photograph has to show the date and time the picture was taken ans well as a way to show that the date was not altered or added later. As stated by Victor, when you look at the evidnece (the picture), you can not definitavely tell it his car as you cannot read the license plate nor show any other marking at are so unique that it could only be his car. Hence, under the rules of the justice system, he is not guilty since the procescuter failed to present suitable evidence.

While you can take the moral position that, while all of this is quite true, he still was illegally parked and therefor should pay the fine. I do not want to get into that arguement only to say, I believe that in all matters great and small, we need to hold our enforcers of justice to the same high standards. Otherwise, those who have these powers can abuse them by arresting us on false charges, present inadequate evidence, and consequently strip us of our freedom. I personnally do not want to live in such a society.

The people charged with enforing the laws recieve detailed trainning on what constitutes legal evidence, how to gather, document and preserve such evidence, and what the consequences of failing to perform as required. If they fail to do their jobs properly, they fail to meet the definition of"guilty".

Therefore pleading not guilty is not lying if you belive the evidence does not meet the legal requirements. You are stating that the procescuter has failed to meet the rules that result in finding you guilty. No more, no less.

Respectfully submitted.

*** Addendum***

I did a google search on not guilty. I found this web page of defintions (http://www.the3rdjudicialdistrict.com/glossary.htm).

One of particular interest is this one:

"presumption of innocence - A hallowed principle of criminal law to the effect that the government has the burden of proving every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt and that the defendant has no burden to prove his innocence. "

Once again, it is the procecuion that has the duty to show clearly that the one charged has indeed commtted the crime.

Sam? Uh, remember the weird thing in the USA constitution about presumed innocence until PROVEN guilty? It seems to be turning the other way these days, innocent people needing to prove they are. I've said it before, I'll say it again. George Orwell was an optimist.