Help me decide how to protest my citation

In My Humble Opinion
1

I got a parking ticket and almost got towed last Sunday. I don’t think I’m guilty, so despite my financial interested toward paying the fine, I’ve decided to fight it. Here’s the story.

11:30 a.m. Park downtown to attend a festival. The space is normally a 1-hr metered no-rush-hour parking spot. It’s a Sunday, however, so I don’t owe the meter anything and the hours aren’t enforced. There’s no special execption sign that says I can’t park there like they post during various other activities.

3:00 p.m. I get the wierd sense something is wrong with my car. I investigate and find that it is being towed. It’s already loaded onto the bed. I freak out. The tow guy says that the special “no parking” signs had been posted. I see the sign that’s now hanging on the meter. The tow guy decides that since I didn’t take it out on him, he’ll let the car down (totally against policy). He states that I’m the last of eight that he’s towed.

3:10 p.m. Lady on the curb questions him, obviously keeping a temper in check. She asks why her car wasn’t taken down. He shrugs it off a few times (he’s breaking the rules, after all) and finally says “Because you didn’t get me. I’m nice.” That means he’s towed 8 cars and someone else is hauling them off too. The lady confirms, unprompted, that there were no sign when she parked at 12:30. I take down her name and number.

3:15 p.m. The cop returns to retrieve his tow slip for his records. The lady goes off on him, sorta, and says “he took his car down but mine wasn’t!” The cop asks why he did that for me and he sorta just shrugs. The lady’s obviously getting him in trouble (or could be). I calm the lady down, saying that the cop isnt a judge and it’s the wrong place, wrong time. She backs off a little, clearly still upset. The cop tells the guy he’s needed somewhere else and then leaves. I jump in my car and head off, past a bunch of other people all scratching their heads as to where their car is. I didn’t stop to get their names or numbers.
So how do I fight this? The only way I can see that I can lose is if the judge says that 1hr parking means even on Sundays, which is arguable since the sign says “1 hr parking. No parking x-x, y-y. Except Sundays.” Is it ambiguous enough that I can say the exception applies to the whole sign? Should I argue that I wasn’t charged with overstaying my welcome, but for having parked where a sign was posted, of which I’m truly innocent?

What should I do about the lady? Have her write me a signed statement and mail it to me, or what?

Should I try a pity card, saying “Come on, this is close enough that we can forgive and forget. I’m already losing a day of work, which I can’t afford.” or just skip the drama. Sure the judge sees it all day, every day, but maybe it works.

If I win, I break even since I’m losing the pay. If I lose, I’m out twice as much. I’ve already plead not guilty, so how do I win?

2

It’s very simple: the special sign wasn’t there when you parked. You can’t retroactively apply a law or a rule. The difficulty will be proving this. Do you know when the sign was put up? Do you have proof of your presence elsewhere (e.g. CC bill) near this time?

3

On further thought, is it not the ticketting officer who has to prove that your car was only parked after the sign went up?

4

Depends on the local laws. It’s quite possible that the law doesn’t make any exception for having parked before the ‘No Parking Here’ signs went up.

But the police probably do have to probve that the signs were in fact up, which might give you an chance to establish when they went up.

Even if the law isn’t strictly on your side, if you can convince the judge that the sign wasn’t there when you parked, she or he may well let you off out of a sense of fairness.

And of course, independent of your ticket, you should definitely complain to either your elected representative (if you live and vote in the town) or else the chamber of commerce/festival sponsor about the police department’s poor procedure in putting up the signs.

5

I was talking to a lawyer about a parking issue. He had been ticketed for parking in a handicapped space. He looked around for the sign. It was on the side of the building…30 feet in the air.

He called it “Revenue enhancement.” I.e. it’s bullshit and everybody knows it’s bullshit but in some areas the cops will shake you down.

Backtracking in time, here’s what prompted my question. I had received a ticket for parking in a handicapped spot. I didn’t do it knowingly and it should have been better marked, but ok. The ticket was $300. I wished to go to court just to say, “Hey, how about marking it better so that people who are trying to follow the rules etc. can do that? Here’s my $300; could you use it to put up a sign where people will see it?” I was told that if I lost, I’d have to pay court costs and the total would come to about $1000.

So after realizing that if a lawyer had fallen into a totally bullshit situation and decided not to fight it, what chance did I have? Again, technically they were right but the objective ought to be fair play, not sucker punching the general public for money. And BTW it was a full year before they put up a proper sign on the space I’d used.

OP, you might ask a few questions before deciding to fight it.

6

The other way that you can lose is if you walk into a kangaroo court, where the judge and prosecutor engage in a mutual circle jerk where anything the prosecutor says is fair game, while anything and everything you say immediately gets “objected!” and “sustained!” Then you can try to appeal, and perhaps the next higher court actually has some reasonably honest judges, or maybe not.