Ticket collector whines

[Miles]

When I was 16 I used to frequent the YMCA and park on the street. I would feed the parking meter when I parked. After a time the meter ran out and I would forget to feed it more coins. The City police station was right next door to the "Y" so I would most often get a ticket. After several ticklets with the same car at the same meter someone in the city accounting office questioned the police. They soon started coming into the "Y" to find and tell me to feed the damn meter. I even caught one of the officers putting a few coins in himself. (small town and all the police,doctors, teachers either grew up with or went to school with my parents)

[loCAtek]

Here in the Park, they don't like the citations to build up, so a towing notice is used after day three. It's a bright red sticker that you can't ignore. After that, then the offending vehicle is taken off the street and the fines can accumulate in private.

[Sean]

I even caught one of the officers putting a few coins in himself.

We have young ladies here on the Gold Coast who do just that Miles...



Of course you have them in the US too...

[Miles]

I even caught one of the officers putting a few coins in himself.

We have young ladies here on the Gold Coast who do just that Miles...

Well Sean we certainly don't have any like yours....................

[Lord Jim]

I suspect if we did, getting parking tickets would be a whole lot more popular...

[Guinevere]

What is the "long standing and well understood law"?

That if you park without the required permit you can be cited three times? Ten times? A hundred times? A thousand times? What?

The bottom line remains that if you park your car once where you are not allowed to park it, then you have committed the offense one time, and you are liable for one citation.

A second citation for an offense that one has committed only once is a crime against justice. A third citation for an offense that one has committed only once is a recidivist crime against justice.

Anyone who is the victim of such a crime has a perfect right to defend her- or himself against it.

There are a lot of safety and environmental laws which allow penalties to be increased for each day that a violation continues whether or not there was only 1 action resulting in the violation or not.

If the goal is to change public behavior then it is reasonable to have a policy whose effectiveness is more rapid and is scaled to meet the impact of the socially undesired behavior. It would improve the granularity of the response to issue tickets (for smaller fines) at intervals rather than increase the amount of the fine. If the law is written so that 'each' two-hour interval is an additional offense (which is not unreasonable since she has deprived someone of the legal use of that space for each interval) then I see no problem with giving multiple tickets/day.

yrs,
rubato

In almost every federal environmental law the civil penalty for violation is calculated as $27,500 per violation, for each day of violation. In Massachusetts violations of state environmental laws have similar penalty provisions -- $25,000 per violation, for each day of violation. Wetlands and other local by-laws are the same (although the max daily penalty is much much lower). The harm caused by the action being penalized -- for example, the illegal filling of wetlands -- is a continuing harm. If the penalty was only allowed to be assesed once, the deterrence factor would be much much lower, and the penalty would be insufficient.

[Gob]

I even caught one of the officers putting a few coins in himself.

We have young ladies here on the Gold Coast who do just that Miles...

Ah the lovely meter maids of the Gold Coast.

Copped an eyeful of those when we were up for your wedding.



http://www.metermaids.com/

[Andrew D]

In almost every federal environmental law the civil penalty for violation is calculated as $27,500 per violation, for each day of violation. In Massachusetts violations of state environmental laws have similar penalty provisions -- $25,000 per violation, for each day of violation. Wetlands and other local by-laws are the same (although the max daily penalty is much much lower). The harm caused by the action being penalized -- for example, the illegal filling of wetlands -- is a continuing harm. If the penalty was only allowed to be assesed once, the deterrence factor would be much much lower, and the penalty would be insufficient.

I presume that the statutes are written so that they clearly so provide. (Viz., the Berkeley example above.) I have not seen the parking-permit ordinance at issue, so I have no idea whether it clearly provides for multiple citations based on one act of parking.

Your observation, however, is irrelevant to the issue at hand. As you say, "[t]he harm caused by the action being penalized ... is a continuing harm." In the permit-parking case in question, the harm sought to be averted is non-residents' parking where residents should be able to park. The woman here is self-evidently not a non-resident: She parked in front of her own home.

[rubato]

The harm to be averted is non-permit holders parking where permit holders have paid to park. Being a resident entitles her to buy a permit, not use the space.


yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

The "harm sought to be averted" is the harm which requires the creation of a statutory scheme in the first place. So you are saying that it was necessary to create the permit-parking scheme in order to prevent people from violating the permit-parking scheme. Brilliant.