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Parking Tickets

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ihateny

Guest
What is the name of your state? NY

Just stick with me on this. New York city has a massive group of workers combing the streets of NY to search for the smallest parking violations and ticket them. I have received such tickets for the most minute of infractions (one for having my CURRENT, NON-EXPIRED registration sticker placed ABOVE the inspection sticker and not to the left of it, another for my registration sticker being expired. The sticker had 07 04 in very large letters. In tiny letters it read July 25, 2004. My ticket came on the 26th.).

Obviously, I can't fight these based on the violations themselves. What I am wondering, and I am in no way a lawyer, is if there is any 14th amendment issues here.

New York hires a disproportionate number of parking violation officers compared to those who monitor moving violations. Would it not stand to reason that if there is a need to enforce parking laws for vehicles that the same number would be needed to enforce moving violations since presumably the same number of vehicles will be in motion at some point?

Also, I live on a one way street that has a stop sign at the end of it at a four way stop. Not only do I see people driving the wrong way up this street every day (it's near an off ramp of the highway) but I also see people run this stop sign every day. I have never seen a police officer hand out a single ticket for either offence and I have reported both to the police. Doesn't this constitute selective enforcement?

The long and short of it is the New York hands out more parking tickets because it makes them more money. It just doesn't seem to me as a lay person that I am receiving equal justice under the law.

I am very interested in this just because of the principal. Do I have any grounds to fight this based on these facts?
 


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okamsrazor

Guest
Who told you selective enforcement was illegal? They can hire a million parking enforcement officers if they like.
 
I

ihateny

Guest
Right, I am makign two points though.

First is that to only enforce some crimes and not others is not equal justice.

The second is that by hiring more of one type of officer when clearly there is the same potential for violations once moving as parked indicates an institutinalized inequality of justice.

I just want to know the legalities of those arguments.
 

racer72

Senior Member
There is no argument because it's not illegal. If you have a couple hundred thousand dollars laying around you are more than welcome to start filing lawsuits.
 

CdwJava

Senior Member
An agency can hire those officers it feels it needs to in order to fulfill its priorities. Lets say they feel that traffic enforcement is more important than investigating burglaries ... they could take all the property crimes detectives and make them in to traffic cops if they want to.

Its a matter of priorities. And your equal justice argument has no merit. Sorry.

Carl
 
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ihateny

Guest
I stated in the other post that I it was a duplicate. I appologize again as I did not see the appropriate topic until I posted the first one.

As to all the advice, thanks for all of it. Guess it just ticked me off. My sense of justice is irked at it and I was hoping there was some measure that could be taken, not so much to avoid a ticket as to change policy. New York is so corrupt that no one even pretends there isn't a qouta system for handing out tickets.

Thanks for the advice anyway. There goes $65!
 

You Are Guilty

Senior Member
Having received (and got out of) several dozen parking tickets, all hope isn't lost. Usually, if you can take the time (lunch hour?) and go down to argue it in person, you can get the fine reduced.

However, parking tickets, especially the old, non-computerized kind, have a number of areas which need to be 100% accurate for the ticket to be enforceable and thankfully, most of the metermaids writing them have the intelligence of a sack of rocks. So there's still hope to get out on a technicality. (Today's tip: the only tickets in NYC where a flaw in writing the ticket is grounds for dismissal are Sanitation and Parking).

I'd go into it but it's been done already, check these out:
http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dof/html/dispute2.html
http://www.theinsider.com/nyc/survive/008park.htm
 
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ihateny

Guest
Guilty,

Thank you so much for that information. That was extremely helpful. I will be going over my ticket VERY carefully before paying it. Thanks for the advice!!!
 

alanhart

Junior Member
cops can't write laws

I know this thread is old, and became a discussion of principles, but . . .

I was issued a ticket in NY for the same alleged violation in May 2004. The cop scrawled "improperly displayed registration" on the ticket. I successfully beat the ticket (via hearbyweb) by pointing out that there is NO such violation on the books. There's one for no inspection sticker, but clearly the cop was able to see my sticker because he got info off it to write it on the ticket. Cops are not authorized to invent new laws, just enforce existing code.

Valid NYC parking violations are listed at http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/parknyc7.html
 

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