NYPD Officer McDonald, you are an asshole

The BBQ Pit
1

Mine is not a situation like this one, where someone did violate traffic law but wished the officer had gone easy on him.

Here’s the situation: at 3:34 PM, I parked my car, got a Muni-meter (that’s sort of like a parking meter, except instead of it being right in front of your car, there’s one for the whole city block and it prints out a recipt which you display on your dahboard to indicate when your time is up) slip showing my time expires at 3:54 PM. I then go into my desired store, and things take longer than expected. So I leave temporarily and return to the Muni-meter. The meter says 3:52 on it. I put in a quarter for another twenty-minute stretch, and look over at my car.

A police officer is writing me a ticket.

“Excuse me officer,” I say politely, “is something wrong?”

“You’re over your limit,” he falsely tells me.

“No, I’m not,” I say, pointing at my previous slip. “It’s not 3:54 yet.”

“It is on my watch,” he tells me.

“The Muni-meter says 3:52,” I tell him. “The slip goes by the Muni-meter time. Come, look,” I offer, indicating the machine just a few feet away.

“My watch is good enough,” his falsehood-filled tongue unleashes on a disappointing world.

I run to the Muni-meter and retrieve my receipt. “See?” I pointed out to him. “It says ‘Start Time 3:52’! I am not over my limit!”

“Then fight it in court,” says Officer Asshole McDonald, placing his vile orange creation on my undeserving windshield.

So ends the tale of my woe. Sometime next week, I’ll take precious time out of my day and go get a judge to dismiss this clearly imbecilic ticket. In the mean time, Officer Asshole McDonald is merrily writing tickets based on his Famous Fast Watch ™. And all I can do is impotently rant about it here.

Officer Asshole, I hope your mistreatment of the citizenry is soon uncovered, and you soon merit a one-way trip to the unemployment line, needing to spend your unemployment insurance checks on tar-and-feather remover.

There, I have Pitted the scumbag.

2

Where I live, we have no parking between 8 a.m. and noon two days a week for street-sweeping. I’ve gotten ticketed at 11:55, after the street sweeper has been and gone. (FTR, I got home at 11:45 and was ticketed 10 minutes later.)

Assholes.

Robin

3

I certainly hope you place a call to asshole McDonald’s supervisor. I certainly am confused. To go by his logic, you purchased your meter slip several minutes before you actually arrived. I would think that the meter is the final say as to what time it is, even if the meter is 4 hours off, you purchased a block of time from that meter, and that block of time should be measured by that meter only.

4

Shit, I’d have lost it.

5

Wow, unlike the other thread, this guy truly is an asshole. What a complete fucktard! Hope things go well in court.

6

This wouldn’t have happened in flushing, would it?
In any case, I second the advice of calling this fuckwad’s superior.
What a fucking asshole!

7

This is one of those stories I’d send to an investigative reporter for local TV. Sweeps are over, but an investigation into unfair ticketing practices is the kind of stuff those guys thrive on. If there isn’t a standard with these Muni-Meters, then they ought not be used, and enough heat of bad publicity might force a policy change.

8

Does this make the meter spit out another receipt, documenting that you were really there at 3:52PMT (Parking Meter Time)?

Or are you going to have to go into this on a your-word-against-his kind of basis?

I hope that guy gets busted down to… uh… what’s lower than parking enforcement?

9

Please ignore my stupid question about the receipt. I’m glad there can be no doubt about whether you were in violation or not.

Definitely warrants a complaint as a ludicrously stupid waste of your time, though.

10

It’s kind of the Peter Principle in reverse; he’s already sunk as low as he can go and he’s still above his level of competence.

11

FinnAgain:

It was - on 71st Avenue between Queens Blvd and Austin St in Forest Hills. 112th precinct. Have you had bad experiences in the area as well?

TeaElle:

I’m willing to bet that the rules are that he was supposed to check the Muni-Meter (or at least calibrate his watch with it) but that he was being lazy. I don’t know if one asshole makes for a compelling TV investigation.

Larry Mudd:

It does.

No, I’m certain this will be enough proof for the judge. I’m not worried that I’ll have to pay it, I’m just pissed off about the waste of my time and the asshole’s refusal to conform his ticketing practices to the reality of innocence or guilt.

Used condom disposal at the prisons.

12

Holy Cow, that’s abnout 2 blocks from my dad’s house! They are indeed vicious around there, and parking is well-nigh impossible.

Now if they would only exert the same level of energy toward ticketing people who double-park, block crosswalks, and practically run over little old ladies…

13

Uggh… traffic cops in Forest Hills.
Yeah… Ugh.

14

Will you still have to pay the “court costs”?

15

[bad joke If I ever had a problem with Officer McDonald, I’d go see Mayor McCheese. [/bad joke]

16

Ditto that remark. It’s a shame you have to waste a half day off work to go fight this bogus ticket. I’d definitely call the supervisor and ask how you can go about filing a formal complaint against the officer. I used to work for a small municipality and these complaints were a big deal and became part of the officer’s permanent record. Granted, individually they didn’t carry much weight. But collectively they could get an officer fired. I’ve seen it happen.

17

Parking enforcement is probably the same everywhere. The real purpose of parking restrictions in most places (excluding hospital and fire zones) is revenue anyway. It’s a scam perpetrated by the municipality upon the people. I once got a parking ticket for parking on the left curb, not of a roadway, but a frontage strip in front of a long line of apartment houses. This was not city, but private property. The ticket said my right wheels were more than 18 inches from the curb. Duh! I paid the ticket because I couldn’t afford to take the time off work to fight it. The assholes count on that.

18

Holy FUCK! :eek:

What an ass; I seriously hope he gets reprimanded for this and stops treating the public like his inferiors. Most cops I meet are great but I really have a burning rage for fuckheads like this that walk around with their dicks on their shoulders trying to make everyone else miserable just because they are.

19

If I could rest my dick on my shoulder I don’t think I would be miserable. (Though this may give an all-too-vivid literalism to your “fuckhead” comment.)

20

Mail in your ticket with copies of the two receipts along with a letter detailing what happened. Just the facts, man, no need to get angry at this point. “I bought the extension, and when I made it back to my car, the officer had already given me a ticket. As you can see, the tickets overlap in time, and I guess the officer’s watch was a couple of minutes fast.”

They do at least review them individually and will send you a ruling through the mail. THEN, you can go fight in court, I think. I got 3 semi-bogus tickets reduced this way (registration violation, I had a temporary reg, but it wasn’t “technically” displayed correctly…)

You can also call his supervisor/station and file a complaint. You might want to wait for a ‘not guilty’ ruling from the violations bureau as backup. Mention that your time, the officer’s time, the parking violations bureau’s time and the supervisor’s time was all wasted on this mess because McDonald couldn’t be bothered to set his watch correctly while writing tickets on the slimmest of time margins.