Our good friend Big Mike surprised us with a funny picture the other day: a screenshot of Google Earth’s view of the Sandbar.
What’s funny about that? Nothing, unless you happen to know that the gray SUV parked in front of the bar belongs to Dave—and if you look closely, you can see a gift from the City of Lawrence parking department.
Like any good downtown Lawrence employee, Dave does his part to keep the city of Lawrence running by accumulating his fair share of little yellow envelopes. Normally, he pays the $3 ticket before its due and his wife is never the wiser.
But sometimes he gets busted. Like when Google Earth captures evidence of his overtime parking.
P.S. Congrats to Big Mike, his lovely wife Anne and their little boy, who recently welcomed another bundle of joy to their family!
the 3 dollar fine might sound ‘cute’ however this city issues arrest warrants for registered owners of vehicles with only 100 dollars in parking tickets.
keep in mind, in almost ALL cases, the registered owner was never served with a ticket in person, had no contact with a LE or parking enforcement person, and never was given a personal summons.. yet they are arresting these people for failure to pay parking tickets when their kid could have actually been operating and never told them, or a passerby who hated you could have removed the ticket to cause you problems.
Putting out warrants on PARKING tickets is ripe for a law suit, because no one can show that you were ever personally served with notice, and no officer or agent ever made contact with you at the scene of the offense, no report was written identifying you or citing you, and no official can testify in court that they served you with a citation and court date. All that is legally needed to issue warrants for a failure to appear.
It only takes 6 unpaid parking tickets to generate a arrest warrant, ruin someones reputation, and end up booked into county jail because each 3 dollar fine inflates to 15 if unpaid, and after six a much larger additional fine is generated that pushes the cost well over 100.
This is not a ‘quaint’ mayberry scheme, its a ‘boss hog’ tourist trap that throws average people in jail who were never served with a personal summons at ANY point in time beforehand. I would sue the city and the legal staff for false arrest and civil rights violations if they came after me with a warrant based upon nothing but parking tickets that do not list a violator on them, and in which they cannot show that at ANY point in time a agent of the city ever served a personal summons or issued a citation to a individual.
They will find the same way in reverse that all the delicious 3 dollar fines they rake in from yokels are pretty costly when they authorise warrants against individuals with no previous summons to that person.
To top it all off, not only do the Boss Hog ticket magnet hicks in lawrence not have any legal paper trail to show that any of these owners were ever personally served with a summons, they attempt to funnel their captive fine payers into shoving cash into yellow money boxes bolted around downtown, and do not offer ANY receipts to any of the alleged violators, and REFUSE to let you pay the fines online if they are 3 dollars and under (which is why the parking ticket is so cheap)
I would sue the city for false arrest and then subpoena their records of all fine collections procedures, and how they ensure that city workers cannot pilfer these demanded CASH payments from these antique money boxes that are great for the city, and bad from those who want proof they paid. This is not 1950 when we operate on the honor system, you need to offer RECEIPTS, especially if you intend to arrest people for non compliance.
The city cant offer any paper trail of records on how their system offers a receipt using their preferred payment system, or any paper trail that they ever served a summons prior to issuing warrants over these stupid 15 minute parking tickets. Someone on KU campus with a future in our legal system needs to contact those targeted by these Feudal parking ticket warrants and offer to sue for false arrest.
Its not the vehicle owners responsibility – the responsibility of the CITY to show its processes and procedures offer those it is targeting with DOCUMENTABLE due process, and I severely doubt that lawrence’s system can demonstrate due process or a paper trail to prove what they are alleging or to document these cases at all. This would be illegal and a civil rights violation – Its not the owners obligation to ‘prove themselves innocent’ once the city escalates a parking ticket to a physical arrest. ITS THE DUTY AND OBLIGATION OF THEY CITY to prove they they document the basis for the arrest in EACH case, and prove that they offered each violator a personal summons that each alleged violator FAILED to comply with BEFORE any custodial arrest.
The city is free to tack on fines and costs and even do credit reporting and this is all legal, but they cant legally arrest people for parking tickets that the city has no proof or PAPER TRAIL that their officers can testify to in court, showing that a person had been summoned to court PERSONALLY and refused to comply- sending someone a non-certified letter or calling someone is not documentation – in these cases they have no proof of service of any summons –
that system is called a false arrest.