Keene activists are ready for a new wave of activism. Riley Blake, a new mover and Free Talk Live host, is hosting weekly 420 meet ups in downtown Keene. Press NH Now, a police accountability activist recently moved to Keene. Most recently, I took a parking ticket to court.
In this video you’ll see the whole process of how to do it yourself. I’ll explain it here, although this is not legal advice as i am not an attorney. First, you have to contest the ticket which is done at City Hall. Bring your ticket and your ID and registration if applicable. Then you’ll get served a court date. That does mean a psychopath with a shiny badge and a gun will likely come visit your home to give you the ticket so make sure you film your encounter and warn any roommates about what you’re doing. Then, you show up to the court date they give you. You don’t need to hire a lawyer for this and they won’t give you a public defender for a fifteen dollar ticket. You could tell the judge you don’t understand the nature or cause of the charge so you cannot plea guilty. You can use that as an opportunity to ask him questions about why you’re there that day. I asked the judge in my case if I am entitled to a fair trial. He said yes. I asked him if I could get a fair trial if there was a conflict of interest. He didn’t answer my question. He lied and said he couldn’t answer that yes-or-no question because he’d have to know what the conflict of interest would be. That’s non-responsive but I didn’t object since I didn’t want to piss him off that early. The obvious answer is that it wouldn’t be a fair trial if there was a conflict of interest in the case. Next, I asked the judge who he represents. He lied and said he doesn’t represent anyone. That stumped me because I knew the judge could say whatever he wanted but I hadn’t expected a human being to stand in front of me and say he represents no one, not even himself. That doesn’t even make sense but we are in legal land when we are in court. So up is down and down is up as Marc Stevens would say. I dropped my questioning and he asked if I would like to plea and I still said no. He gave me a trial date in July.
The prosecution didn’t end up giving me discovery until the day before trial. So the day before trial I went to the court house and the police station to file a Motion to Dismiss with the judge. You have to go to the police station and file it there to because they give it to the prosecution and you must notify them as well. The day of the trial, the judge granted a continuance so I would have more time but didn’t grant my motion to dismiss. So a trial was rescheduled for two weeks later. I was actually happy it didn’t get dropped because I wanted to cross examine Jane McDermott, the old lady thug who wrote the ticket and left it on the car I was using. The day of trial I was able to do that. I got to ask her a lot of fun questions including how much she gets paid to be at court. She was on her day off but being paid twenty-five dollars an hour to be there. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Writing parking tickets is objectively not just something the City of Keene needs to do in order to maintain parking spaces. If it was, they wouldn’t spend all of this money paying the parking enforcer, the prosecutor and the judge to be in court in order to get fifteen dollars out of me. I believe the real reason is to create an atmosphere of fear and make sure people stay obedient. No private company maintaining these parking spaces would waste so much money. But they don’t care, it’s your tax dollars they’re wasting so why be responsible with it? They’ll get more out of you, right? If you don’t pay them they’ll come to your house and shoot your dog and bring you to prison.
I won the case because when Jason Short, the prosecutor, rested his case I motioned to dismiss on the basis that he never showed any evidence that I was the one who had been operating the vehicle or that I owned the car, since it’s registered under a church for which I am a minister. But even if you try this yourself and your car is registered under your name, if the prosecution rests without showing any evidence that you were the one operating the vehicle or that the meter was actually out of time, you could motion to dismiss. The judge may just not like you and deny your motion. He may order you to pay the fifteen dollars. If you really want to be a stellar activist you can tell him you’re not going to pay the fine. He will either make you do community service or put you in jail for one day. But, (and this is especially true if you are able to film the trial,) they don’t want to be seen throwing people in jail over fifteen dollars. If enough people contest their tickets, they will be so backed up there’s no way they would be able to continue this racket.
Please enjoy the video of the whole process. It’s fun to laugh at how ridiculous of a situation we are in while in court trying not to be harmed by these freaks who believe they are superhuman. They wear suits, badges and robes. They speak in ritualistic patterns. They will reprimand you for getting frustrated with someone who is lying under oath about you. They pretend it’s fair that all of them are on the same team against you. But that’s the “fair and just” legal system we are forced to not feel contempt for!
Another conwoman trying to scam the justice system. It’s bad enough you conned about your fine but you actually took it to court and wasted taxpayer money.
You also scammed the court trying to convince them your vehicle is registered to some bogus church you claim to be the paster of. I doubt your “fantasy” church is able to claim tax exempt. You will be going to jail before Ian does.
How can you complain that someone won a ticket case? Lol
I’m not complaining. What I am concerned about is what she told the judge
I thought that they just throw in the towl as soon as you say you are taking it to court.
I believe the courts are taking this all the way because it involves a child.
I’ve seen a lot of freekeeners try this stunt all the time. Wasting tax payers money by taking every little thing to trial in hopes the judge throws out the case.
It doesn’t involve a child . Why do you think that
Oh yes it does.
Who? Who’s the “child”?
It’s involving Ian who’s 40 or something and it’s involving Bonnie who’s in her mid-20s so who’s the child there?
Or are you just lying as usual
Why don’t you investigate this matter yourself. Before you call someone a “liar” you need to back that up with real evidence.
So you are lying. Got it.
I have to provide evidence because you lied.
How do you expect anyone to respect you, when you can’t back up your bull shit!? : There was no “child” :
There were two people involved, you stupid fuck, one was 25 and one was 40ish.
Fucking liar
Is he confusing the other story involving a child with this one? Who knows… Jumping Jacks is a moron. There is definitely no child involved with this parking ticket story in either event.
Yea, they have dropped all the tickets issued to folks in our community which maybe was about a dozen parking tickets over a 3-4 year period until I think this ticket. They probably didn’t drop this because Ian and/or Bonnie who changed her name to Freeman went in and requested the court date. However it’s hard to tell for sure. I think we had a story about how they had dropped every ticket for 3-4 years here and they might also be reacting to that.
When I first came to Keene, parking tickets were 3 dollars. TRUE STORY! So they’ve gone up exponentially. And they do, right at that ticket window, just basically throw their hands up and say “if you are going to court, nevermind, we will quash this ticket” Obviously for all that: people to come into court; the judge, the prosecutor the bailiffs, the security, the room, all that for $15. So I say congrats to her for winning this and good job and it’s hilarious. But people should definitely take heed that they have to find out how it is in… Read more »
I can’t believe that person.. “were you operating the car or were your operating the car?” Typical Keene statist cog. That’s the thing about some of those like people in the courts and Etc half the time they’re trying to gather information because they’re such busy body gossips because they want a yapp and Yap about it at, the station or the courthouse, or City Hall : they’re all big nests of gossip. So good on her for saying that’s for the courthouse you busy body okay I threw in the busy body part. I don’t want to sound mean… Read more »
I thought she was super at asserting herself in court. Of course having Ian there as support and guide does help immensely because he’s a seriously experienced if she was to go in there by herself without someone as a guide and support it would be much much harder I think
As I understand it Ian was not the primary person who advised her in fighting this ticket despite being by her side in court. Two other folks assisted her with defense. My experience from watching others “help”, “advise”, or otherwise support people fighting charges in court is they don’t actually do much. I witnessed one case where a lawyer was acting as I believe standby council and the defendant was acting as his own lawyer. In that case the standby council did act at times, but even there it was pretty limited. This was over a 3 day trial that… Read more »
Winning the ticket is great! Getting a educational experience is also *very great*. Having it occupy so much of your time and energy, is less great. I’ve had it where they say “we’re not taking it to court, you win” right at that ticket window. (Well they don’t say “you win” but you know) It is pretty valuable experience though, I guess, either that or, it’s just a big waste of time and energy, for very small cash. I’m posting this right at where it’s getting a continuance in court because that’s a big room for $15 you get to… Read more »
I would have asked her what kind of “quartz” the meters are.
I would have objected to marking it exhibit one in preference to market exhibit A
Yea, devices that measure things have the potential of being off. One question that should get asked and has resulted in wins before is “when was the last time the meter was calibrated?”… they maintain the meters, but have never calibrated one so they’re basically screwed. How off on the measurement is important in that if they are off by a minute and you actually had another minute to go when the meter said times up it means you aren’t guilty.
I don’t particularly care what kind of quartz it was.
I would have been doing it for fun. Lol..
Ok me again .
The closing arguments she was concise and the prosecutor just offered… It seemed to me..a whole lot of nothing lol
I guess he did have a point, that contesting the ticket is evidence.
So he’s saying ignore the ticket because they won’t know who to come after.
Yea, they in theory could probably do something against the car, like toe it, but they don’t do that in Keene. It would probably be safe to rack up parking tickets indefinitely in this case as the car is registered to a LLC owned by the Shire Free Church. The liable party legally I do believe is actually the LLC here. The town is small and some of the things that might do or be able to do in a bigger city they just don’t do in Keene. They don’t boot cars here either. The city I believe will send… Read more »
Hey idiot. The so called “church is just another scam. That is why it isn’t a tax free. Ian did this to try and get out of paying taxes. Well, it didn’t work. Ian is going to lose everything and maybe his wife during the time in prison. By the way, it’s “tow” not “toe”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/09/business/oil-production-biden-trump/index.html
Is this Bonnie Ian’s wife? If so, did she take his last name?
Oops, my bad. The Bonnie in this article is not Ian’s wife.
Yes it is his wife
Bonnie did take Ian’s last name and this is Ian’s wife. The car is registered to an LLC owned by the Shire Free Church. Bonnie and Ian went in together to request a trial and Bonnie did the talking. They couldn’t prove Bonnie parked the vehicle and they couldn’t prove who the liable party was as the prosecution didn’t present or have the law available. The judge accepted the fact it would depend on the law as to who the proper liable party was as to who they should have to charge and so the prosecution failed to prove its… Read more »
Amazing job Bonnie! I think you probably did the best job defending yourself that I’ve seen of anyone I’ve seen in court before and I’ve seen a lot of court cases.
I wonder if Bonnie will ditch him of he spends years and years in jail
Every city in America has parking meters. I have paid fines in Keene. I see it for what it is…my fault. I didn’t put enough quarters in the meter or I stayed in a store or restaurant a little too long. Annoying, but…my fault. This all reminds me of the coverage of Ian’s trial. Breathless talk about how incompetent and dumb the prosecutor was and how Ian was winning. I half expected the Jury to acquit and issue a public apology. Then…he was quickly convicted of ALL charges. Isn’t it time to get a small grip on reality and take… Read more »
Speaking of taking responsibility for your own actions, some municipalities have limited parking for people who are forcibly compelled to attend their courts. Not to mention, the sheep are told they must appear at an exact given time and then wait for their case to be “heard” (cha -ching!) Of course the waiting can drone on for hours, especially if the court is having a productive day of fleecing the other sheep in line in front of you. If you leave to “reload” the parking meter (if you were lucky enough to get a spot) you will be punished. If… Read more »
I think it’s pretty “responsible” to go to court.
It just takes a lot of time and energy, but everyone uses their own time and energy as they choose to.
That’s freedom that we all have.
That’s a very basic freedom.
So you don’t like how they use their freedom.
That’s another freedom : freedom of speech.
Which the FK site doesn’t restrict.