Shooting fish in a barrel.

[stomachmonkey]

Governor Signs Law Stopping Fairfax Police From Ticketing Cars While Awaiting Inspection - I Take LIBERTY With My Coffee

Bruce H. Redwine, longtime owner of Chantilly Service Center, whose customers’ cars were frequently ticketed while awaiting state inspection. Virginia has now enacted a law to prohibit police from issuing such tickets. (Tom Jackman/The Washington Post)
The story of Bruce Redwine and the Chantilly Service Center made people mad. For years, he and other auto shop owners watched with outrage as a Fairfax County parking enforcement officer ticketed cars that were awaiting state inspection or repair. One shop owner estimated his customers had been hit with $60,000 worth of fines and fees for expired inspection stickers or tags over six years. Redwine got so angry he snatched one ticket out of the parking officer’s hand, only to be charged with felony assault on a police officer.

State Del. James M. LeMunyon (R-Fairfax) investigated the situation after reading about it in The Washington Post in October. He introduced a bill in December to prohibit ticketing cars awaiting state inspection, and it passed both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly unanimously. On Wednesday, Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed the bill into law, his spokesman said.

“Cool,” said Redwine, working as usual in his shop in the Mariah Business Center off Route 28 Wednesday afternoon. “Absolutely it’s a good thing. But most people waiting for inspections weren’t a target. Here, people were targeted by the condo association, which was using the Fairfax parking police as their agent. It’s not so much the police were targeting as the [condominium management],” he said, using a more colorful adjective for the association which oversees the industrial park on Sullyfield Circle.
There was not much dispute that cars with expired tags or registration were being ticketed in Mariah, largely because Mariah’s property management firm had provided Fairfax police with a letter in 2009 specifically granting police permission to enforce county traffic, parking and towing ordinances on the private property. The auto shop operators all rent from owners of individual units in the industrial park, and their owners claimed to be powerless to revoke or change the police letter because they weren’t on the condo board of directors. J.R. Motz, the park’s property manager for Commercial Condominium Management, declined to answer questions about the letter or the condo board.

One parking enforcement officer, in particular, Jacquelyn D. Hogue, was a regular in ticketing cars outside the repair shops, the shop operators said and court records showed. When she entered the industrial park, word spread rapidly and shop employees hustled to move their customers’ cars inside before Hogue could slap a ticket on them. Redwine, who’s been running Chantilly Service Center for 21 years, said he did state inspections and emissions tests first thing in the morning, to make sure no expired stickers were visible, but cars sometimes failed, and repairs sometimes took time
Shoaib Massoud, the operator of A-Zee Auto Repair, said, “The cars are coming here for repair. I talk to her [Hogue] politely, but no good. We are suffering, for sure.” Hogue declined to comment, but a Fairfax police spokeswoman said Hogue was merely responding to a request for service, and that Motz and Mariah had repeatedly sought heavier parking enforcement.

In one episode in October 2014, Hogue ticketed one of Redwine’s customers’ cars even though he had moved the car into his garage. As Hogue walked toward him with the ticket extended, Redwine said he snatched it out of her hand. He admitted using some insulting language toward her, but not touching her. Hogue later went to a magistrate who issued a felony warrant for Redwine. Redwine had to surrender himself at the Fairfax jail, be handcuffed, booked, fingerprinted and photographed.
Then he went to trial, where Fairfax prosecutors reduced the charge to a misdemeanor — Hogue is not a police officer — but Redwine was convicted and sentenced to four days in jail. He appealed to circuit court and in September 2015, a jury found him not guilty after 20 minutes of deliberation. But he had to spend thousands in legal fees to reach that result.

“The police ought to have better things to do,” LeMunyon said after visiting the auto shops last fall, “than play ‘Gotcha!’ with people who are trying to comply with the law.”

[GH85Carrera]

That is pretty low, to ticket someone in the act of getting legal.

So I guess car owners had to get the inspection done before they expired to stay ticket free. I have no problem ticketing a car that is not at the inspection site with expired inspection stickers. But to get them while in the process is pushing it a little.

[tevake]

Sounds like this stems from a dispute between the landlord and the tenants at the industrial park.
Weird form of law enforcement to ticket those actively trying to get into compliance .

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by tevake

Sounds like this stems from a dispute between the landlord and the tenants at the industrial park.
Weird form of law enforcement to ticket those actively trying to get into compliance .

Seems like a fairly good size development so it's reasonable that the property owner would petition for traffic enforcement which you would expect to cover stop signs, one ways, handicapped spot violations, etc....

Reading between the lines it sounds to me like one or two overzealous parking enforcement officers saw an easy opportunity to meet their quotas.

[mattdavis11]

Pretty dick to do that, but the people must have an issue with the shop, and parking is a real problem there.

I won't park my car(s) on the street, in front of my home, if the registration or inspection is expired. They don't police it, and certainly wouldn't ticket or tow. It's just how I roll, and it's the law.

[rusnak]

I'm pretty sure that if the cars are not within the public right of way, they are on private property. The shop owner could have thrown the meter maid off the property, and the tickets would not hold up if the vehicle was on private property. That's why they have to take a picture or the ticket gets thrown out, even if the vehicle registrations are expired.

[stomachmonkey]

I know this may sound counter intuitive but Police do not always have automatic authority to enforce traffic rules on private property.

My community is what we refer to as an unincorporated area of the county.

As such any traffic infractions were unenforceable.

You could speed, run stop signs, fail to signal, etc... with impunity.

If the Police saw you they could issue you a citation but you could ignore it because literally no one had jurisdiction to enforce them. Kind of like winning in small claims court but not being able to collect.

Once the residents figured that out it was mayhem. We had to petition the Governor to allow the county Sheriff to enforce traffic regulations and even then we had to spell out exactly which ones we wanted enforced and get signatures from at least 50% of the residents which almost did not happen.

So I think something similar happened here. The property owners requested enforcement of traffic rules but may not have necessarily had the shops and their customers in mind as a specific target.

It's possible the property owners could only request all or nothing unlike our community that had the option on which rules were enforceable.

The article makes it sound like all, or at least a large number of the tickets were issued by one individual.