Here’s a guest blog from Mark Edge on his successful noncooperation regarding a parking ticket. Next time you get a parking ticket, consider demanding a trial, like Mark did. It bogs down an already overburdened system. Of course, risk is still involved and your mileage may vary. As you’ll see, Mark’s charge was dumped before trial, but I went to trial over a ticket on Apr 28th and have never received a verdict. Worst case, if you don’t want to noncooperate all the way and they find you guilty at trial, you will probably only need pay the $5 then – after you’ve really made them work for it. Please give this a try, Keeniacs, and post to the Free Keene Forum with your results or in advance if you’d like some input or support at your court appearance, should it get that far. This is an excellent first step for an activist new to saying “no” to government people.
When I moved to Keene in Sep06 I noticed right away that Keene has a problem with parking and Parking Enforcement downtown. The parking meters dissuade people from patronizing the businesses downtown. One morning my wife and I were going to go to Timolean’s for breakfast. When we parked, we realized that we didn’t have any change. We got back in the car and went to Friendly’s on West Street, were the parking is free.
Obviously, there needs to be some sort of system to disincentivize people who are not doing business from taking up the parking spaces of those who wish to, but Parking Enforcement, as I understand it, runs a large deficit every year. It costs more to send the little ladies with parking tickets around to fine people than they collect from meters and fines. That is silly.
Top that off with what I have often said, you don’t have to pay those tickets. This is only a theory, but I did test it recently. Here is the pivotal point of the theory: They, the little ladies with the parking tickets, can’t prove that *you* parked the car.
In Nov09 someone parked my wife’s car in a city parking space on Winter Street in Keene. I went to the space to retrieve the car and found a $5 parking ticket on the windshield. I decided to test my theory and went directly to the Police Station on Marlboro Street to dispute the ticket. The ladies there gave me a court date some weeks thence, for a car that I do not own!
I went to court and told them that I was disputing the ticket and they gave me a court date in Apr10, 6 months after the offense. I lived life normally with the calm assurance that when the time came I would win handily. Some point before Apr10, I got a letter telling me the case had been postponed until Jun10, further convincing me that Justice had reclaimed her terrible swift sword from the American Judicial System, if she had in fact ever lent it.
Jun10 did roll around to meet us and last week I got a letter from the Keene District Court informing me that they had Nol Processed my charges. My theory isn’t proven, but it is further confirmed. My friends, you don’t have to pay these parking tickets and further fund their system. You don’t have to go to jail and further validate their system while costing them price of a few baloney sandwiches. You just have to make them spend they exurbanite price of a trial to prove that you parked the car.
