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CHICAGO (AP) -- A Chicago woman is trying to get out of paying a parking fine that has snowballed to more than $100,000.
The penalty should be whatever it costs to tow the car out of there and dispense of properly, plus maybe like one week worth of tickets. This is pretty ridiculous.
Edit: Noticed that the city offered $2,500. Eh, still a bit high.
That's clearly ridiculous - and it also lacks common sense and concern for our fellow human beings.
Alas, I once had the misfortune of getting both of my front indicators stolen while parking my car on a street. I received one ticket for the left blinker and one ticket for the right blinker. I received another ticket for the left blinker 15 minutes after the first ticket, and I also received another ticket for the missing right blinker at that time - by the same officer. 25 minutes after receiving those two tickets, this officer came back once again and, wouldn't you know it, gave me two more tickets.
Each ticket was for $75! Thus, not only did I have to replace the stolen blinkers, but I also had amassed tickets worth $450 in less than an hour!
Naturally, I contested the tickets and was fined $15 total. I asked what the policy on writing repeat tickets was and was informed that, legally, the cop could write a ticket every single minute!
This was in Manhattan and that cop was clearly a total a-hole.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuselage
That's clearly ridiculous - and it also lacks common sense and concern for our fellow human beings.
Alas, I once had the misfortune of getting both of my front indicators stolen while parking my car on a street. I received one ticket for the left blinker and one ticket for the right blinker. I received another ticket for the left blinker 15 minutes after the first ticket, and I also received another ticket for the missing right blinker at that time - by the same officer. 25 minutes after receiving those two tickets, this officer came back once again and, wouldn't you know it, gave me two more tickets.
Each ticket was for $75! Thus, not only did I have to replace the stolen blinkers, but I also had amassed tickets worth $450 in less than an hour!
Naturally, I contested the tickets and was fined $15 total. I asked what the policy on writing repeat tickets was and was informed that, legally, the cop could write a ticket every single minute!
This was in Manhattan and that cop was clearly a total a-hole.
Your tickets were clearly abuse by an idiot, but I have no sympathy for that woman. She has a responsibility as the owner to know where her car is, who has it and what they are doing with it
and to not lend it to irresponsible people. I'd guess that one way or another she will get out of most
of it, but hopefully others will learn from her experience. I know people that park illegally every day and just consider the $40 fine a charge to park in a more convenient location than a $20 parking garage a block away. If they got ticketed again every hour or two they might not be so lazy.
The penalty should be whatever it costs to tow the car out of there and dispense of properly, plus maybe like one week worth of tickets. This is pretty ridiculous.
Edit: Noticed that the city offered $2,500. Eh, still a bit high.
Some years ago my car got a bunch of parking tickets in my own driveway, with two other cars behind it (between my car and the street), because the tags were expired. Since I was in the middle of an extended hospital stay, I did not know about the tickets until after they had defaulted and the fines had necessarily skyrocketed.
How much should the penalty have been? No tow was necessary and no tow was executed.
That's a fail. They could boot your car, they could tow your car and hold it for ransom (resolution of the fines), but the biggie is that they can suspend your license until you resolve the fines and pay a reinstatement fee. They will never stop at taking your car, they don't call it even until they get their money.
CHICAGO (AP) -- A Chicago woman is trying to get out of paying a parking fine that has snowballed to more than $100,000.
When I was in med school, I had a '75 Oldsmobile Omega that I bought from my brother's roommate for $300. I did not get the title transferred (when you are poor, you live in a different world) as it was a POS with nearly 200K miles on it. I painted it "battleship grey" with a brush and roller, as half of the paint was blown off from a sandstorm the car experienced in Arizona. My college town had eggregious parking and I accumulated a lot of parking tickets. Of course, I did not have the money to pay them, so I just threw them away.
One day, they put "No parking" signs in front of the house I was sharing with several other guys (unnoticed at the time by me). To my surprise, I found my car "missing". I assumed my roommates took it and hid it somewhere else in town (a common "joke"). When they insisted they did not, I discovered the "no parking" signs and immediately called the cop impound area and asked if they had my car. They said that they did in fact have the car and asked if I knew it had $625 worth of overdue parking tickets and were interested in my name. I hung up the phone and let them keep it. The guy I bought it from was in school in Nebraska and did not care, as he never went to Iowa. Being a poor bum always produces stories that are very funny in retrospect.
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