Ramsey County kangaroo traffic court (St. Paul, Welcome: apartment, neighborhood, place to live)
Minneapolis - St. PaulTwin Cities
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I'm usually not one to complain on this forum, but I was dealt an injustice today that I think all residents of the great City of St. Paul should be made aware of.
I'm going to tell this in chronological order for the sake of simplicity. My apartment does not have off-street parking, but there's always plenty of on-street directly in front of it. That's actually one of the reasons I chose this building. Every three weeks or so in the warm months, the city cleans the street at night. One night prior, they (at least usually) post about 3 signs per long block (1/8 mile long) so people can move their cars. Assuming everybody drives their car daily so they see the signs, but that's a different problem.
I got a ticket for parking during street cleaning. I'm about 85% confident that the signs were not posted the day before, like they should be. I'd think I would've seen them, but was not 100% sure that time that I had been looking carefully enough. Hearing officer dismissed it because it was my first ticket.
No more than 2 or so months later, I got another ticket. The first question in my mind was, did I remember checking for signs the night before? I did. Honestly. I walked over to the edge of the street, where they're normally posted, and looked both ways. There were no signs. I'm roughly 97% confident of this.
Hearing officer offered a reduced fine. I declined it because, in principle, I'm innocent. Went to trial today. Subpoenaed the guy from Public Works who allegedly put out the signs. He turned out to be a decent guy and was not overtly upset at me for requiring him to come in. I feel sorry for the poor guy for having to go to court. He was just doing his job and I'm sure had no ill intentions. The officer was also there.
I had a page of questions that I asked the officer and a page of questions I asked the guy from Public Works. Stuff like "Do you remember putting the signs out on this block the night of October 12th?", "Can you describe the 2400 block of Myrtle to me?" Basically anything I could think of to show that they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the signs were there that day. I'm confident that I did prove that neither the officer nor the public works guy remembers that specific block. But the referee told me for something this minor that whether or not they remember it is irrelevant.
Public works guy did testify that he normally puts out 3 signs in a (presumably 1/8 mile) block. In a high density area, where all parking spots are taken, this would work out to be roughly 1 sign for every 4 cars. Odds are you wouldn't see the sign unless you happened to park in the spot right next to it. Which makes me fairly confident that a LOT of people in St. Paul are having this issue. I'm not aware of any way of finding out when they're doing street cleaning other than looking for these signs. It sure smells like a moneymaking scheme.
The referee (judge?) was visibly irritated at me for about the latter half of the trial, obviously because I was taking so much of her time. (Isn't the judge supposed to remain calm and not show irritation?) At the end of the trial she simply said that I must pay the scheduled fine because the officer testified that the signs were there. I can tell you with confidence that he was either lying under oath, or he failed to check for signs in that specific block before writing tickets, something he claimed he did every block under oath.
Everybody that attended my trial had to sit through 45 minutes of trials and plea bargain discussions for other people. As well as my hour-long trial. Yes, in a sense I agree it's a waste of everyone's time, but if you disagree with me that I should've gone to court prepared, please tell me what you think the appropriate method of dealing with the situation would be. I'm innocent, and I'm doing what an innocent person is supposed to do.
I came back outside to my car, parked on the street, with - you guessed it - another parking ticket on it. I had fed the meter to approximately an hour and 45 minutes after my trial started, assuming that was more than plenty of time for the trial. I was wrong. The time listed on the ticket was pretty much exactly when my meter would've run out of time. Which really gets me thinking, I bet more likely than not that the officer who gave me the ticket I went to trial for (and as such was required to sit through the 2-hour trial) radioed his buddy who was enforcing parking downtown and told him (or her) to look for my car and try to ticket it. If that is the case, and I think it most likely is, that's really a mean-spirited way of dealing with the situation. Way to go, City of St. Paul. This tells you something about our government. I didn't fight this one because technically it was legit - I'm not one to fight a ticket for an infraction I honestly and knowingly committed - and...well, I simply don't have the time to keep fighting tickets. They have won their little moneymaking scheme.
One would think that a city which isn't really gaining population like St. Paul would strive to be an easy, desirable place to live. This runs completely counter to that objective.
Has anybody else had similar experiences in St. Paul?
One $33 ticket is no big deal to me. The reason I'm posting here and making a big deal of it is that if nothing changes, statistically it will continue to happen, to me, and to many others who don't have off-street parking. $33 x 2 tickets/year x let's say 5 years works out to be $330. And that is significant. I also think I read something to the effect of $33 is for the first ticket and each subsequent ticket is a lot more. So I could easily be out $1000 in 5 years...if nothing changes.
If you park overnight on the street in St. Paul, I would highly encourage you to call Public Works and ask for a schedule of the street cleaning nights, as well as ask them to post frequent signs (more than 3 per 1/8 mile block!!!) so you don't get tickets. If enough people call, the point might actually get through their thick skulls and they might be motivated to do something about it. Except for my theory that they're doing it as a moneymaking scheme. I don't know. It can't hurt to call.
The second thing I'd like to encourage people to do is vote against all the judges. A wise person once told me to do this because it keeps the judges on their toes; it hopefully keeps them honest and making fair and thoughtful verdicts. Here's clear evidence that Ramsey County has a kangaroo court, at least for traffic violations. A solidly good reason why you should vote against all the judges, in the hopes of making Ramsey County a better place to live. A kangaroo court is a court which automatically finds everyone charged with a traffic violation guilty, regardless of circumstances or whether they honestly were guilty, in the interest of making money for the city/county. Up until now, I thought kangaroo courts were limited to small towns in rural areas in places like western Kansas. To my surprise, here's one in the middle of a major city. And it's not just me. A friend of mine got wrongfully convicted of a traffic violation leading to an accident right here in St. Paul, because the officer believed the other driver's side of the story. Another friend got wrongfully convicted of a traffic violation leading to an accident in rural Wisconsin, because the officer AND judge believed the other driver's side of the story. I can tell you both of these friends are honest people and would not have fought their tickets if they had honestly believed themselves to be guilty. I also attended a co-worker's speeding ticket trial years ago in Iowa. Same thing. Where does it end? Is the whole country full of kangaroo courts?
And the most important question of the day: How can we fix this injustice?
I don't think what you experienced was injustice, and if it was, it's definitely about as minor of an injustice as one could experience. Maybe look on the bright side that they didn't tow your car. Were there signs posted when you went outside and found your car ticketed? If there weren't, your case would be stronger. Otherwise, maybe start taking time/date stamped pictures of your block every night? I hesitate to say that, because you might just be better off paying for off-street parking or just paying better attention when you park (you did say your 'roughly 97% positive', which makes me have doubt about how sure you are).
But after taking all of the time it took to read your post to figure out what grave injustice you suffered, I ended up empathizing more with the unfortunate souls that had to sit through your hour-long court appearance, and feeling that this and the fact that multiple public employees had to be present/subpeonad for your $33 ticket was more of an injustice against the Ramsey County taxpayers at large.
No, there were definitely no signs posted the morning after. I took pictures as well as clearly remember looking that morning. But I think they take them down after they're done street cleaning, so their being gone in the morning doesn't prove they weren't there.
If you see what I did as an injustice, you should motivate people to contact public works to either put more signs out or notify residents beforehand using some kind of effective method. That would legitimately resolve the issue.
One other thing that I forgot to mention. We all had to sit through 5-6 other trials before mine. The judge sided exactly with the prosecution each and every time. A couple of them were undoubtedly just fighting their tickets for the sake of fighting the tickets, and knew they were guilty. In those cases the judge was correct to give them the full fine. But I'm pretty sure the majority of people that were there yesterday had at least some truth to their sides of the story, probably they were fully in the right. Yet the judge ignored their explanations. More evidence that Ramsey County has a kangaroo court. It's not just me.
One other thing that I forgot to mention. We all had to sit through 5-6 other trials before mine. The judge sided exactly with the prosecution each and every time. A couple of them were undoubtedly just fighting their tickets for the sake of fighting the tickets, and knew they were guilty. In those cases the judge was correct to give them the full fine. But I'm pretty sure the majority of people that were there yesterday had at least some truth to their sides of the story, probably they were fully in the right. Yet the judge ignored their explanations. More evidence that Ramsey County has a kangaroo court. It's not just me.
The judge (or referee) probably correctly perceived that most of the people there were guilty and were just trying to wiggle out of a ticket. Look at it this way. The city worker and the cops go through this every night, over and over, posting the signs, looking for them, and then writing the tickets. They have this down to where they could do it in their sleep.
You come along, admit that you aren't completely sure there were no signs, can't always see them when there are signs, and then want to be acquitted on the basis of reasonable doubt.
The thing you are missing here is that the key word in the phrase "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is reasonable. You don't have to be judged guilty beyond ALL doubt. Given the experience that the city worker and the cops have in this, the fact that the cop testified that there were signs posted, and your own doubts about the matter, I would say that that it's reasonable to conclude that you were guilty, and you were correctly convicted. There was IMHO no injustice here.
The judge (or referee) probably correctly perceived that most of the people there were guilty and were just trying to wiggle out of a ticket. Look at it this way. The city worker and the cops go through this every night, over and over, posting the signs, looking for them, and then writing the tickets. They have this down to where they could do it in their sleep.
You come along, admit that you aren't completely sure there were no signs, can't always see them when there are signs, and then want to be acquitted on the basis of reasonable doubt.
The thing you are missing here is that the key word in the phrase "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is reasonable. You don't have to be judged guilty beyond ALL doubt. Given the experience that the city worker and the cops have in this, the fact that the cop testified that there were signs posted, and your own doubts about the matter, I would say that that it's reasonable to conclude that you were guilty, and you were correctly convicted. There was IMHO no injustice here.
Accept for the fact that cops routinely "testi-lie" of course.
The judge (or referee) probably correctly perceived that most of the people there were guilty and were just trying to wiggle out of a ticket. Look at it this way. The city worker and the cops go through this every night, over and over, posting the signs, looking for them, and then writing the tickets. They have this down to where they could do it in their sleep.
You come along, admit that you aren't completely sure there were no signs, can't always see them when there are signs, and then want to be acquitted on the basis of reasonable doubt.
The thing you are missing here is that the key word in the phrase "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is reasonable. You don't have to be judged guilty beyond ALL doubt. Given the experience that the city worker and the cops have in this, the fact that the cop testified that there were signs posted, and your own doubts about the matter, I would say that that it's reasonable to conclude that you were guilty, and you were correctly convicted. There was IMHO no injustice here.
I'll bet one of the main reasons kangaroo courts have lasted so long in this country is that so many of our citizens have the above opinion: Blindly trust the police and assume they're telling the truth when they testify. I'm pretty sure that police are one of the if not the most corrupt professions in the US, if you don't count illegal stuff like drug dealers. Do that many of you realistically think they can be trusted? Apologies for going off on a little bit of a tangent here, but I think this trial is an example of how our country is ever so slowly going in the direction of 1984. Thomas Jefferson said we need a revolution every 20 years to prevent us from ending up there. It never happened, and now we're well on our way to 1984 and the government is so strong and most of the people so complacent ("lethargic" to quote Jefferson) that it would be next to impossible for a revolution to be successful. The above post pretty much illustrates this lethargy in the sense that the poster blindly trusts authority.
You are using the phrase "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" but your post essentially describes the phrase "guilty unless proven innocent beyond a reasonable doubt". I said I'm roughly 97% confident that the signs were not present. That means relying on my memory alone (which was very good because it was fresh the morning after and I committed my one-night-old memory to my long-term memory at that time due to the situation's importance) there is one in 33 chances that the signs were not present. Most people who felt this way would have said "I'm certain". I, being a detail-oriented engineer, chose to state the percentage. I think it's fair to say most people would've said "I'm certain." Therefore, the whole deal boils down to my word against the officer's word, and it's obvious from the judge's behavior that she chose to blindly trust the officer. As I'll bet she does in almost all her trials.
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."
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