Parking Tickets and the “Consent of the Governed” Part 4

The next chapter in my parking ticket saga has been written. As you may recall from Part 3, I have been attempting to get the Keene police to answer some basic questions about my alleged obligation to obey their laws and statues. I had written to KPD’s captain Kenneth Meola asking my questions and he refused to answer (see the PDF), saying:

I reviewed the questions you posed in hopes of trying to draft responses that you would find logical and convincing, but the very nature of your questions precludes that. Your view on these matters is obvious, and I’m confident I could not convince you otherwise.

Apparently, Meola, who is very nice about his refusal to respond and also very pleasant in person, feels no obligation to answer simple questions about the system he has insisted I am a part of. Because of his non-responsiveness, I am going up the chain to the police chief, Arthur Walker. Here is my letter to him, which I will be hand-delivering on Monday: (more…)

Parking Tickets and the “Consent of the Governed” Part 3

Longtime readers of this blog may recall that springtime of last year my car was ticketed for an expired parking meter. I wrote a letter to the Keene PD expressing my willingness to pay the fine if they could show me the proof of the obligation they were alleging I have to follow their statutes and ordinances. Weeks later, Captain Kenneth Meola wrote me back this letter, claiming the ticket had been paid and citing a bunch of their laws, then claiming I have an obligation to obey without providing evidence as I requested. I let that letter go unanswered, as he claimed the matter had been paid, which I certainly did not do, and I’m not sure who did. Perhaps they just marked it paid, or perhaps some anonymous observer of this blog went and paid it for me. I did post the ticket number last time, so that’s a possibility.

Flash forward to April 14th when my lady Julia parked the car in the road out front of my house because our tenants were blocking her side of the garage. She forgot to move the car and left it overnight. In the morning she found a $15 parking citation had been left on the car for “NIGHT TIME PARKING”. Here in Keene, there is some ordinance that says no street parking after 1am between November 1st and May 1st. The reason for the ordinance is so plows can get down a street during snow nights. The dates are arbitrary, of course, and so even though there was no way accumulating snow was going to happen in the middle of April, the cops were out ticketing people. (more…)