A few minutes before each live hearing, I receive the casefile from the clerks, and I skim it to try and guess what the citizen is going to say to get the ticket overturned.  Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m a little off, and sometimes, the citizen comes into the hearing with testimony so outrageous that no one could have possibly seen it coming.

When this elderly gentleman first came into his hearing, he seemed like your garden-variety cooperative respondent: well-dressed, well-spoken, and respectful.  He was contesting a street-cleaning ticket (notoriously difficult to win), “12:00PM to 3:00PM Mondays,” and he had a manila folder with about twenty pages’ worth of evidence.  Still, nothing strange about this, but then I swore him in and asked him to testify.  I will dissect the testimony into sections for easier discussion.

Witness Testimony: Respondent testified that he did park his vehicle at the cited location on the cited day, but left at 11:30AM, well before the citation was issued at 12:29PM.  Respondent further testified that no citation was received on the vehicle; instead, Respondent claimed that the citation was placed on his windshield, on the passenger side, two (2) days after the date on the citation while the vehicle was in the driveway of his home, which is over twenty (20) miles from the cited location.

Alright, so right away, I presume that he probably just missed the ticket on his windshield for a couple of days.  Perhaps his eyesight is failing.

Respondent testified that he noticed the citation only after taking the trash out from his home, and that no citation had been on the windshield when he drove the vehicle on cited day, or when his wife drove the vehicle the next evening.  Respondent theorized that the traffic officer had noticed Respondent park the vehicle near the cited location a few times before; noted the vehicle’s license plate number, make, and color; wrote the citation even though the vehicle was not present; and ultimately tracked Respondent’s home down and placed the false citation on the vehicle, over twenty (20) miles away.

Obviously, the idea that a traffic officer would, two days later, go twenty miles off his or her normal beat to hunt somebody down and ticket them for a mere street cleaning violation is a little ridiculous.  If a vehicle drives off before a traffic officer can place a ticket on the vehicle’s windshield, the officer will simply mail the ticket to the registered owner’s home.  Last time I checked, though, the United States Postal Service did not offer windshield delivery.

Respondent also suggested that a significant conspiracy was at work, and that the City should launch a wide-ranging investigation into the matter.  Respondent revealed that this was the true reason behind his contesting the citation–that shadowy, ulterior forces were at work within the City Department of Transportation, and that they must be rooted out at all costs.  When asked if it was possible that Respondent simply missed the citation, and that it had actually been placed on the vehicle’s windshield on the cited day, Respondent demanded that this was impossible.

Huh.  The wheels have now officially come off the wagon.

When asked if Respondent was the registered owner of the vehicle, Respondent stated that the vehicle belonged to his daughter, and that the vehicle’s registered address is not the same as his home address.  Respondent hypothesized that the traffic officer must have entered an establishment near the cited location that Respondent frequents in order to get Respondent’s home address.  Respondent submitted a number of photographs, some showing the citation placed on the vehicle’s windshield towards the passenger side, as evidence, and pointed to a record of service in the United States and Canadian Air Forces as proof of his veracity.

He thinks rather highly of himself, if you ask me.  He’s suggesting that not only did the traffic officer hunt him down to ticket him, but the traffic officer also went around asking local business owners for his address first.  I tried explaining a number of things to this man during the hearing, but he was having none of it.  Faced with this sort of intransigence, I simply smiled and told him I would take everything into account before issuing my decision, which he would receive in the mail (and not on his windshield) next week.  That decision follows.

Finding of Facts: What Respondent contends is nothing short of ludicrous. First, the traffic officers cannot independently adjust the date or time fields of a citation, as they are automatically generated by the hand-held computerized ticket writer the traffic officers carry.  Second, when a traffic officer is unable to place a citation upon a vehicle’s windshield for any reason (such as because the vehicle drives away), the citation is automatically mailed to the vehicle’s registered address, meaning there is no reason or motivation for a traffic officer to “track down” a citizen after two (2) days to put a citation on his or her windshield.  Third, the citation was placed on the passenger side of the windshield, meaning it is highly likely that Respondent simply did not notice the citation on the vehicle’s windshield for two (2) days.  In any event, there is simply no evidence that anything strange has occurred.  Rather, it is more probable that Respondent failed to see the citation upon the windshield when it was first placed there.  I therefore find Respondent Liable for this citation.

So what do you think?  Should I have dismissed or upheld the ticket?

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