Due process too much hassle for DC dept. of motor vehicles
Washington DC's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will no longer allow citizens to protest parking tickets in person, reports Thenewspaper.com. Instead, they'll offer mail-in and e-mail adjudication.
The move is intended to allow automated street sweeper parking ticket machines to boost the number of infractions cited well beyond the 1.6 million currently handed out by meter maids. As one-third of those who contest citations in the city are successful, the hearings cut significantly into the $100 million in revenue tickets generate each year.LinkUnder the DMV's plan, motorists will only be able to object to a ticket by email or letter where city employees can ignore or reject letters in bulk without affected motorists having any realistic recourse.
the latest
latest episodes
Easy solution: stop paying them.
When they arrest you, tell them that you sent in your email dispute and you're waiting for a reply.
Someone remind me again what differentiates government from any other armed gang stealing your money for the "protection racket" again?
Remember when "fleecing of America" was a catch-phrase?
I've actually successfully contested at least four parking tickets by mail in DC. It appears that they actually read and consider the cases by mail. I've always had good reason to do so, though, and I've always included proof of my "innocence."
I am a longtime DC resident, and the one time I went in to contest a ticket, I waited around for over three hours and ended up leaving in frustration. It would've been worth my time to just pay the $50. The people contesting their tickets didn't have a leg to stand on. I would never contest one in person again, seeing as I've had success by mail in the past.
As much as I hate to say it, DC is a city whose primary means of transportation is by personal cars. We have a lot of lazy drivers here who think that getting a parking ticket is unfair because, well, they really don't have a good reason. "It's just unfair!" Read the parking signs, find a legal spot and walk the extra block (it's healthy to walk!). Or ride your bike or take the Metro!
re #2:
Armed gangs have more personality.
@ZUZU
@Yurei
Further evidence that the very idea of government is bad--not. The reason it is bad is because so many people hold to that view. Of course this plays right in to the hands of the establishment because they want people to be too cynical to participate.
I say it's time to start loving the idea of government. You just have to figure out a way to be part of it. Figure out a way to make it work. Get involved. If leave it to other people (the rich), you will get the government you deserve.
Law enforcement in America has become a scandalous racket. Driving, of course, is compulsory or just about and the people drive according to the flow of traffic which is not always the speed limit or the speed minimum, for that matter. The amount charged for speeding in most places is all about the local government trying to extort money from people. It's not uncommon for a speeding ticket to exceed $300. Parking, smoking pot, and a million other so-called crimes as well. It all serves to keep the American gulag in operation. And make no mistake, it is a gulag. More people in prison in America than any other place in the cosmos that we know of.
If you think not having due process is unjust, fucking do something about it.
Damn! I hope they're dedicating those fines to some neighborhood parking garages.
--Mike
@Pyros
@Pyros
"If you think not having due process is unjust, fucking do something about it."
I tried, but they invalidated my vote.
Are you espousing armed revolution or just being an internet tough-guy? Either will produce the same level of accmplishment.
That's freaking awesome!!! I wish they would do that out here in Santa Barbara. It's SUCH a pain in the butt to walk in with a ticket. Yikes, I worked with a wedding photographer in town, and we got parking tickets that weren't valid all the time!!! but never had time to fight them... ended up having to pay them!
If I could do it via email that would be GREAT!
It gets better all the time. I'd never gotten a ticket in my life between ages 16 and 40, when, after I'd lived in the area for a few years, DC started with the cameras at intersections.
After getting hit twice with, as I recall, one hundred dollar fines for going through yellow lights - I've never run red lights and have a perfect driving record, i.e., accident-free - I started to feel like a menace on the road.
I lived in adjacent Arlington, where they didn't have the cameras. So it would often happen that I'd "come to" at the last minute, realize I was in DC, and basically slam on my brakes at the last second because I was in danger of going through a yellow light.
Either they should recalibrate their settings so they get true red light runners - of course, that would pull in a lot less revenue - or they shouldn't have adjacent communities with and without cameras. In areas with lots of traffic lights, it basically means trying to adopt a whole different driving style depending on whether you're going to, say, Giant or Walmart...
*sigh* Yet another piece of evidence assuring me that the dystopian-police-state future of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" is another day closer.
Are parking tickets designed to enforce proper parking rules, or designed to generate revenue? If it's the latter, then why not just stop playing silly games and charge a toll to enter DC, bureacracy like that only encourages people to break the law or monkey-wrench the system (that guy in Cambridge MA. who stole hundreds of parking meters now looks like a folk hero).
#9: I think he is advocating political activism, rallies, or perhaps even a run for public office if you think enough others share your views. Also, registering to vote far enough ahead of time to make sure your registration is valid; you can't simply accept disenfranchisement with a shrug and use that as a reason to disregard the rule of law.
I think people are missing something important: a government shouldn't be relying on fines for non-compliance with laws as a expected revenue source.
In Baltimore there is currently a parking ticket controversy with agents writing tickets in order to meet their expected target of ticket [although they deny there is a quota]. The reason this is happening came out in one newspaper article where a parking official said since the elimination of meters in favor of parking machines you can use credit cards in, people are complying and paying for parking since it is easier to comply. The city of course still was expecting the revenue from parking violations so they created a situation where fraudulent ticks were encouraged and accepted.
DC is already overzealous in its ticketing. Several times I have received a $100 ticket at precisely 7AM for parking in a rush hour zone. I understand the need to make room for all the Virginians invading my city, but I'm doing my part to make their commute a little more unbearable so that maybe they'll move into the district like civilized people. Anyway, isn't $100 a minute a little steep?
The Immigration department rejected a plan that would reduce paperwork for all because it would mean they would lose millions of dollars from people who file their paperwork incorrectly and have to pay for a new application.
There has to be a word/tag for these kind of government decisions. Kafkaesque?
This one's up there with SWAT teams for small towns with less than 1000 people.
Hey,
In Toronto Ontario I recently saw a parking officer (and they have cars...that's another story) who almost got into 3 accidents and broke about 7 moving violations in the span of about 3 minutes. Coincidentally these were the LAST three minutes he would have been able to write tickets (time parking). We also have a new ticket creator where the officer just inputs the info, and the ticket pops out. Problem being that IF the car pulls away before the guy puts the ticket on the car, they have NO way of knowing that they have a ticket until they renew their licence the next year, and HAVE to pay the ticket. The other bad thing about the ticket creator is that low and behold, they write the next ticket while DRIVING to the next illegally parked car! If talking on a cell phone is bad, inputting data and reading licence plates has to be worse. Hence why the guy almost hit 2 cars and a pedestrian.
Oh, and two nights ago I just about saw a cop hit 2 people as he was coming around a corner without his siren...which would have been okay had the cop not been driving on the SIDEWALK at the time...
@Zuzu--
I don't know what that quote was supposed to mean. Are you suggesting that we can never trust governement? I think that is a very defeatist way of lookng at the world, and one, incidentally, that is very American.
You don't hear Europeans talking nearly as much about how much they hate their government because they acutally have government that works.
If you're argument is that government is inherently bad and can never be trusted, you would essentially be making the case that the Bush Crime Syndicate has been making all along. They espouse the populist sentiment that government is bad then set about smashing the gears to prove it.
If you don't believe that government can be good and can actually work for people, then you don't believe in democracy. What else is there then to believe in?
Of course since there may be nothing else doesn't mean that one SHOULD believe in democracy, but was is democracy? Perhaps it is the plural expression of humna will as it relates to government.
When it relates to government it is called the democracy, but a great deal of the power of the same basic idea can be seen in the market, and on the internet to name just two.
The bottom line is that the American government should be whatever we want it to be. There's no point at tilting at windmills, however. Understand the mechanics of power, and set about changing the sytem if you feel like it needs to be changed.
@Santa's Knee--
No, I am not espousing armed revolution, and I don't have any idea how that though got into your head. I can't think of anything that would be less effective in acheiving a greater level of freedom and happiness in America. And I don't understand what you mean by internet tough guy, but that's ok.
If popular will were properly harnessed we wouldn't be suffering the encroachments of some of the insane people in government who seek to increase their power and diminish Ours. The task at hand, as I see it, is to build these tools. I'm rather shocked that it hasn't been done because it would be relatively trivial to do. I make this point in this public forum in the hope, however silly or impractical, that I may one day inspire someone to do just that.
@Tim Halberg
There may be a convenience factor associated with email parking tickets that has been overlooked, and perhaps this should be made available as a choice. But I have a problem with it being the only choice. This system wasn't set up for your convenience. I was set up for the convenience of the courts. That it might have been convenient to you is mostly an accident.
The issue at hand is not whether this new email system of Rapid E-judication is more convenient, but whether it moves us further down the slippery slope which leads to sharply curtailed civil liberties. I would say that it does even if by just a little bit.
So I wonder whether you think that it doesn't, or whether you are happy to give up civil liberties if your life is made to be a little more convenient?
@Bosconet--
I didn't miss the point you made. IN fact, I made it myself. Parking enforcement, just like much of our enforcement programs, are designed to be money makers. I wonder who here on Boing Boing thinks that a $75 fine is fair for a minor parking violation? I would say a fair fine would be $5 to $10. But people in power are usually not interested in fairness. They're greedy and want to get as much money as they can because they know people don't fight against them successfully.
The only way to do anything about it is to fight it. The only way to do that is through strong, participatory government.
@Crash / @Pyros: Do you both really not know that D.C. residents don't have a voting representative in Congress?
@Stadanko / @the article: I guess the implication is that it was hard for administrators to say "no" to appellants in person, but now that they don't have to face them it will be easy? If the appellants were teenagers, and asking the administrator on a date, maybe I could buy that.
I've never heard the sentence "But I batted my puppy eyes at the magistrate and he said he'd drop two points from the penalty".
@Jay Levitt, #19: It is my understanding that parking enforcement in the municipality of Washington, DC is under the purview of the mayor and city council, for whom the citizens do vote. The DC Department of Motor Vehicles is not a Congressional bureau.
Furthermore, Santa's Knee says that "they invalidated his vote", implying there was a relevant ballot he voted upon but for some reason was disenfranchised.
@Jay Levitt
No, I didn't know that, but what's the point in trying to make feel stupid about it?
Most people have no clue about how our government works because they never use it. Does that come as some kind of surprise? I mean, didn't YOU know that??? Hello?
I've already admitted to everyone that I'm not that smart. And allow me get something off my chest. Attacking the not so bright is the last refuge for the person inclined toward cruelty since it has now become socially unacceptable to make fun of people who are overweight. Verily, stupid is the new fat. But, as Martin Luther King Jr. once remarked, “The Arc of History Bends Toward Justice.” I know that someday our long struggle will end and the scoundrel will have nowhere to hide.
Few people, in fact, have paused to consider our unfortunate and unhappy lot: We're not so mentally incapable that we are able to earn people's sympathies and understanding, yet we are not quite smart enough to functionally very competently within society. For this reason we absolutely no advocacy whatsoever, and we are hated by all.
Truth to tell, I'd rather be gay, black, jewish, mexican, female, or republican.
So let me now quiz you. Have you ever considered why people stupid are stupid in the first place? Do you think it is something that we can help? Most people who would never dream of calling someone with down syndrome a retard would make no scruple of derisively calling me a stupid. But in terms willful human agency there is no difference between being stupid and more profoundly mentally compromised. Therefore, why is it ok to cast aspersions at one and not the other?
The sad truth is that most people who are stupid live their entire lives trying to cover up. They live in a world of shame and doubt. Well, I for one am sick of this kind of life.
I have resolved that that I will no longer wear this badge of dishonor. From now on, I will hold my head up high and boldly proclaim that Yes, I AM STUPID! And I am not open to taking any more derision from my mental betters. Remember that the next time you smugly ask one of us to name the capital of North Dakota, (which I do happen to know, by the way) or if we know whether or not DC has a member in Congress.
Remember too that according to leading intelligence theorists IQ follows a bell curve. This means for every person on the right side of the curve (intelligence > 100) there is a person of equal but opposite mental ability on the left side of the curve. This in turn means that we are strong in number.
We could be your brother, your sister, your mother, your father, your lover, or your co-workers. This is a disease that we have that can't be helped! Why is it ok to make fun of us?
If you were bald or fat or impotent or ugly would it be ok for me to make fun of you?
Consider too that being smart is not all that it's cracked up to be. One could make an argument that we wouldn't be destroying our world if we were a little dumber. Didn't it take a smart person after all to invent the gun, the car, and the atom bomb? I will leave you with a thought from my hero, Forest Gump: "Stupid is as stupid does."
@ Pyros
You said, "I say it's time to start loving the idea of government." So I quoted 1984 with Winston Smith's ultimate love of Big Brother.
Get some perspective if you think that government force is the only sphere of influence for social change.
This "Republicans say government doesn't work and then prove it" line is rubbish compared to the fundamental analysis that all governments are just glorified gunmen; try choosing not to pay your taxes if you don't believe me. Pirates and emperors is just a matter of scale; they all are in the business of organized violence. 枪杆子里面出政权
To affect real change, I will quote Buckminster Fuller, "The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done — that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual." This is the essence of a voluntary Free Market globally peer-networked society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Action
The constant tension between needing a car and the hassle of actually owning one was one of the reasons I finally left DC. (Well, specifically, it was the ticketing, the booting, and the towing of my car to questionable parts of Maryland not accessible by the Metro.)
On my last day, I met one of the unkindly creatures who'd been papering my car those many months and asked her if she ever felt parasitic doing what she did. She said she didn't have an opinion on the matter, but pointed out that I'd parked in a residential zone for which I didn't have a decal and would need to move four blocks. Zing!
In California they decided a while ago to privatize parking ticket enforcement and collections. Because of this I am in my own version of hell right now.
I am currently fighting two parking tickets which are $35 apeice, but I can't do it in court. I have to go through the administrative channels first. Of course, in order to recieve an adminstrative hearing I have to pay the fine first. Since they already have my money I doubt that they will even consider my case.
Have a look at their website and you tell me if this looks like a company that is going to spend any time or resources to do right by the public.
https://www.ticketwizard5000.com
OC Weekly, a local publication, did a story about this. Interesting read if anyone is interested.
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/news/the-ticket-wizard/25265/
I was wondering if someone that lived in California would mention their NoDueProcessMasterReamTheDriverTron.
That started at least nine-ten years ago. Imagine my surprise when I found I couldn't contest a ticket in Alameda (after successfully contesting one only a few years before). Instead, I had to simply pay the fine, period. Through a collection agency. That had an office in the Alameda courthouse.
Fucked. Up. One of MANY reasons I left CA for the supposedly backward state of Texas.
Oh my god, that site is HILARIOUSLY bad! I actually had to check to see if it was for real. I wonder if it's the same now as it was when it was first put up? Cheapsy animated gif, background image, giant button graphics.
The whole set of company after company nested like a matryoshka doll and with no real provenance makes me wonder who did whom a favor when the California law was changed to stop jailing citizens for parking tickets but privatized justice.
It also makes me wonder which, if any, lawmakers benefited from privatizing fines.
Because, honestly, it seems like a very bad idea to put so much power into the hands of a company with no accountability.
I really wonder how some people can sleep at night.
@Zuzu
"Get some perspective if you think that government force is the only sphere of influence for social change."
I don't think that at all, and, again, I don't know where you get the idea that I do. Basiacally, citizens need to remake their government. They need to get involved so it is they who pull the levers of power. The government needs to be by, for and of the People.
If people think this is a hopless endeavor (which is always what the current set of power brokers want people to thin) then they will do nothing and things will worsen. We must hold that government can be good even if it is rotten right now.
For anyone who's ever had to deal with DC government ANYTHING, this is almost a welcome change -- not having to deal with a human in DC is usually the best way to actually get something done.
(As for why DC is so vicious about parking tickets -- it's because many of you folks who don't live in the District have Congresscritters who like throwing in riders to Federal Appropriations bills that prevent the District from raising taxes to people who work in the city but don't live there. Without being able to levy a commuter tax, the District's ability to raise funds is limited (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/04/AR2005110401052.html).
Of course, it doesn't help when Taxes and Assessments staff are found to have been writing themselves $900,000 checks for fake refunds without a whole lot of consequence for years (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2007/11/08/ST2007110801265.html?nav=rss_email/components).
@Pyros
Or, as I suggested, accept that government is -- by definition -- the manifestation of organized violence, and instead spend one's time and resources working outside of its scope wherever possible to empower individuals and grow wealth. I strongly disagree with your assertion that if you're not trying to change government directly, the only other alternative is to "do nothing and things will worsen". Participatory government is a red herring.What about illiterate people? How can they defend against parking tickets if their only recourse is to WRITE an explanation?
It would be so much easier if they could walk in and say "Hey! I can't read the No Parking sign! I'm Illiterate!!"
Now those glory days are gone.
Privatizing the collection of fines is a variety of tax farming. Historically, that doesn't work well.
Pyros, don't tell anyone you're stupid. You don't come across that way. In fact, I have trouble believing that you are.
Zuzu, to believe that government is the manifestation of organized violence is to despair, and to despair is to give control of the whole system to the rich, powerful, and naturally authoritarian.