I parked on a city street in Miami last night, and used the “Park By Phone” app to pay for my parking (3 hours, beginning about 6:25pm). When I got out of my class I found a parking ticket on my windshield (with a time stamp of 6:43pm). I grumbled, put it in the car, and went about my merry way, already composing in my head the letter I would write contesting the ticket.
So, this morning I open the parking app and download a pdf of the receipt clearly showing the correct zone, the time my parking started, and the duration I purchased, all of which corroborate my stance that the officer erred in writing the ticket.
Then I start looking at the procedures for contesting the ticket, and the only option appears to be to go to one of a half-dozen or so courthouses in Miami-Dade County to fill out a request form to appear in court to contest the charge. No option that I can find to contest by mail (like I did multiple times in Chicago). Now I start calculating the value of my time v. the $36.00 fine v. my unwillingness to let the county just collect free money like this.
But then I noticed something - the officer wrote down the wrong license plate number. Where I have an “I” in my license plate, the officer transcribed it as a “1.” Oh, and they wrote the color of my Jeep as “GRY,” rather than “GRN.”
So, my inclination is to ignore the citation, at least for the moment. I checked the Florida Motor Vehicles web site, and the plate number the officer wrote down is not even assigned. It probably wouldn’t be hard for someone to look at what the officer wrote for the license number and guess what it should have been (it’s a vanity plate), but what do you think the odds are that someone will do that?
What would you do? I hate the idea of having to physically appear in court to contest it (although I like the idea of playing “lawyer” for a day :D); if I could contest by mail I’d go ahead and do it (pointing out the officer’s errors), but in person sounds like a big hassle. Or, if you happen to live in Miami-Dade and know of a way that I can contest via mail or web, please let me know.
If there is a phone number or email address on the ticket, or associated with the parking enforcement department, contact them directly rather than go through the official methods to contest a ticket.
Let them know the officer misread your plate, which then failed to link your car to the park by phone payment, and ask them how to proceed. I got a parking ticket cancelled this way, all by phone and email, and not at all through the court itself, maybe it will work for you.
I note that this situation seems increasingly common: “It will cost more to prove you’re innocent than to simply pay (thus effectively admitting guilt).” Fines often seem well calculated to be just a bit below the amount a sensible person would be willing to take the time to dispute.
I would certainly follow Cheesesteak’s advice. The argument “I can prove pre-payment for the period of the ticket” is a strong one.
Toronto had the same stupid system until a few years ago. You could accept guilt and pay the ticket online or you could go stand in line at one of about 4 locations in the city and request a court date. Even with this process, court dates were running 8-12 months behind.
They finally came to their senses and you can now contact them directly for someone to administratively adjudicate it for errors like this. I’ve had to do it at least once where the officer didn’t see the pay and display slip that was clearly on my dash. You still have the option of going to court if the adjudicator does not cancel the ticket.
I would personally wait for a violation notice in the mail and deal with it if/when it showed up.
It’s possible the system is designed to make money from people doing this.
The city may be throwing out tickets like dandelion seeds, figuring that a certain percentage of people will just pay the fine to settle the matter, a certain percentage of people will go through the inconvenience of fighting the tickets in court, and a certain percentage will just ignore the tickets as they’re clearly in error.
The people in the last group will receive a notice six months from now, telling them that they’re now being charged with not settling their parking violation and the fine for that is $1500.
Thanks, everyone. Still haven’t found a for-sure way of contesting via mail or phone in Miami.
Since the license number on the citation is not, in fact, my license number, I’m inclined to ignore it for now. Maybe I’ll change my mind next week, but I doubt it.
Is the “ticket” a document where blanks are filled in, in pen or is this a typed document done on an on-board computer? If the licence number is not yours and it’s on a computer type of document I don’t think you’d have anything to worry about.
Contest everything; never assume the police always get it right. I’ve gotten a moving violation ticket that turned out to be for an illegal traffic sign and a parking ticket that the cop didn’t bother to sign (the judge seemed really miffed about it, too, like he saw these all the time–he apologized to me for the officer wasting our time and dismissed the ticket :eek: ).
I don’t know where you live, but here in NYC, that doesn’t matter in the least. If the traffic agent put a ticket on your car, you got it. Doesn’t matter if a storm came along and blew it off your car, and you didn’t know about it until a month later when you got a notice saying it was too late to contest it and you owe the fine plus late fees that would make a loan shark blush. Too bad, pay up. Or they’ll tow your car, and then you’ll have to pay up plus pay for the tow.
Printed from on-board computer. One reason I am feeling good about the chances this does not easily trace back to me. As far as the “official” record goes, the ticket appears to be written against a license plate that doesn’t exist.
Unclear. Everything on the citation references Miami-Dade County and the Parking Violations Bureau. I think that the Miami Parking Authority is probably responsible for managing the street parking where I was, but I can’t tell if they had any hand in issuing the citation or not. Probably worth filling out their web form anyway.
I strongly suspect that there are a LOT of bogus tickets written in the hopes that people won’t bother to contest them. If you do contest it, there’s no big deal - they just remove it (you hope). If you don’t - it’s money in their pockets.
As far as ignoring and hoping it’s never traced to you, that’d be nice but what if they have means of looking for close matches when doing data entry - e.g. “O” vs “0” and so on.
I wonder if your parking app has any suggestions for what to do in the case of bogus tickets. Since you can very clearly prove that you had paid to park, using the app, it’s worth checking out.
Be careful…ticket writers are now taking pix of cars/license plates and attaching these to the written ticket in some computer file. If this was done in your case, it won’t matter if the officer wrote down the wrong plate, as it might have in pre-pix days; it may be discovered.
I filled in the form that doreen linked to, so we’ll see if that gets any traction.
I got really good at handling this kind of thing in Chicago, but this is my first time navigating the system in Miami, so I’m still learning the ins and outs of how government works down here.
Almost 40 years ago I had a $175 ticket which I just paid instead of contesting, despite that I was hardly affluent. I took a day off work to appear in court, thinking I could explain to DA’s representative and at least get charges reduced. But there was nobody from the prosecutor’s office in the courtroom! I didn’t need further aggravation. F**k it; Nolo contendere; just take my money yer Honor.
I thought — or am I wrong? — that software that checks license plate numbers is set up to treat '1' and 'I' as equivalent, and '0' and 'O' as equivalent.
But they can’t associate that ticket to his car/address because of the bad plate info entered.
You’ve got a license plate mismatch & a color mismatch; I’d think it would fail even if it found a 0/o match for that plate.
I’d take a screenshot of the paid receipt from the app, store it somewhere safe & forget about it until if/when you get a notice in the mail from them. I doubt you’ll ever hear about it again. If, for some chance you do, then email them your screenshot & tell them they effed up & to dismiss the ticket.