MSN’s Report on Robin Hooding Calls Us “Liberators”!

Thanks to MSN’s Eli Epstein for filing this video report about Robin Hooding and the city’s lawsuit against us. Here’s the text that accompanies the video: (the text is different from the video’s audio)

Keene, N.H., doesn’t normally have a lot in common with Sherwood Forest.

Recently, however, a group of residents calling themselves the “Robin Hooders of Keene” have made the city more similar to the fictional forest than anyone could have imagined.

The group of half a dozen Robin Hooders has been tracking city parking attendants and refilling expired or soon-to-expire parking meters before the attendants have a chance to ticket the vehicle. The Robin Hooders typically leave notes on the car windshields explaining their heroism and asking for a small donation.

“Your meter expired; however, we saved you from the king’s tariffs, Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Please consider paying it forward,” their notes read.

According to 32-year-old Robin Hooder Ian Freeman, the team has prevented the city from issuing more than 4,000 tickets since 2009.

“We like to see less force in people’s lives,” Freeman said.

Freeman is part of the Free State Project, an initiative started in 2001 to establish a libertarian community. In Keene, he and a team of Free Staters started “Robin Hooding” to lessen the government’s impact on residents through parking enforcement.

“Humans should interact on consensual basis,” Freeman said. “Generally, the government should get out of lives and stop hurting people.”

Some Robin Hooders are paid for their actions, their salaries sustained by donations from grateful motorists. Robin Hood of Keene’s Facebook page is filled with pictures of pittances and thank you notes the group has received.

To the city of Keene, however, the Robin Hooders and their tactics aren’t particularly appreciated. In a lawsuit filed earlier this month against six group members, including Freedman, the city alleges that the group “regularly, repeatedly and intentionally taunted, interfered with, harassed and intimidated” parking officers by surrounding and sometimes touching them.

“These individuals repeatedly taunt and harass me, asking why I am stealing peoples’ money and telling me to get another job,” one female parking enforcement officer said in the suit.

“The taunting and harassment tends to get worse when there is a group,” she added. “They try to one-up each other at my expense.”

In an affidavit, a male parking enforcement officer alleged that one Robin Hooder called him a “bitch,” “coward,” “racist” and “murderer of brown babies,” an allusion to his military service.

Other parking officials said in the suit they’d suffered physical ailments resulting from the alleged harassment, including heart palpitations, stress and traumatic dreams. The city says in the suit that enforcement officers have considered resigning, which would force the city to hire and train new officers at an added expense.

Freeman denied ever harassing a parking officer, but admitted that he’s attempted to have conversations with them.

“It can be about weather, pleasantries or striking questions, like the nature of government and how their job is to ruin peoples’ days and threaten to take their cars,” he said.

Freeman said Robin Hooders typically record video of their proceedings to prove that they aren’t breaking any laws and so the parking officials don’t unjustly accuse them of a crime.

The city has asked for an injunction against the Robin Hooders that would prevent them from stepping within 50 feet of an on-duty parking enforcement officer.

“In my experience the Robin Hooders have been courteous,” Freeman said.