Fighting City Hall

I got an inside look at Milwaukee's justice system the other day, due to someone else's mistake. That did not deter me. I decided to fight City Hall. They say you can't do that. Oh, yes, you can. You just have to be willing to put up with the system that's not designed to please nor hurry to serve you.

Back in August, I was about to get into my car, parked outside in an alley lot available for those renting in my building and the one next to it. I've paid for a spot in that area for the past seven years. There are about 16 spots available; anybody with a parking sticker can park in any one of them. 

This particular morning, I was in spot #3, quite some distance from my back door. On the other hand, it gave me a chance to do a little more walking, not a bad thing for someone my age.

So you can imagine my utter shock when I found a parking ticket on my windshield. The ticket hadn't been issued by my landlord, either. It had been issued by the city of Milwaukee. It accused me of a parking violation, and fined me $40.

It was time for the famous outcry from John McEnroe: You cannot be serious. 

It was simply ridiculous. I had parked in a spot among which I could have chosen any that were open. At least, that was the arrangement I thought had been made by my landlord. 14 of the spaces are numbered and two aren't, for whatever reason. If you pay monthly, which I do, you can park in any of them that are open.

That was on a Saturday night. Sunday morning, this ticket greeted me. Something had changed, but I had no idea what.

Infuriated, I took the ticket to the office of the rental company, with which I'd had good relations these past seven years, despite some serious repairs that cropped up. They were always nice about it and responded with decent speed, considering their large territory.

And their response was: We know nothing about this.

Well, that answered that. Someone had made a mistake, thought I was parked wrong, must have called the police instead of the apartment management. Someone rushed right over and gave me a ticket. So they called the wrong person for the wrong reason and the wrong thing happened.

And I was stuck with it. I had no idea who made the mistake. The referred address was the portion of the apartment complex that was south of mine, so the only thing I could possibly do was knock on all those doors and find the culprit. But what if people didn't answer? What if they were still in error, and thought I had it coming to me? Ugly possibilities arose. I rejected that option.

There is a remedy, but of course you have to go to some trouble. The first step is to respond to the ticket by getting online and explaining yourself, putting it inside one of those boxes they create for that purpose. Fortunately, I thought, the landlord had given me a phone number for them to call to clarify the matter. So, in addition to telling them that a mistake had been made and that anyone who had paid the rental for a space could in fact park in any of the spaces, I gave them that number as well as holding back on my absolute indignance that I should have to go through such an ordeal. There, I thought: The matter will be settled quickly.

Except within about ten days, the response came back: Sorry, still guilty not guilty. But ah, there was another step: I could appear in front of a magistrate or someone like that. Then I could bring whatever proof I needed and get out of the $40.

But it led to this question: Was it worth the $40? Why didn't I send the fine into the appropriate post office box and be done with it? I would ask myself that more than once in the following days.

I arrived at the county courthouse parking lot with plenty of time before I was to appear in front of, well, someone to process my complaint about someone else's complaint. That was a wise move. I had no idea where this building and/or this room was, and fifteen minutes in, I still didn't. I wandered through hallway after hallway and reminded myself about how angry I was, as well as reminding myself that all I had to do was go home, put a $40 check in the mail, and that would be that. But I occasionally get hung up on principle, and this was burning a hole right through it. 

Turns out I was in the wrong building. Finally, I hailed someone who worked in the parking office, and she was a big help. I dragged myself into a room about five minutes after I had been told to report, and I wondered whether my case would be forfeited after all that. But no: a nice young man took my information, had a couple of questions to ask me, and directed me to have a seat in a waiting area. I asked him how long it might take to hear my case; maybe half an hour, he said.

He was about right. I was herded into a courtroom with used wooden benches. We had a female judge named Molly, who was as good-natured as she could be, all things considered.

She explained herself thoroughly to all those gathered with some kind of parking issue or issues. "You have three possible pleas today: Not guilty, no contest, and guilty," she said. "If you plead no contest or guilty, we can talk about your case. If you want to plead not guilty, I don't want to hear anything you have to say about it."

She didn't mention that doing so would be possibly incriminating yourself, which is a violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, a document which, though our president is busy trying to maneuver his way around it each day, does really count even here in a traffic violation tribunal. But that meant that, if I should want to go on with this extremely unnecessary process, I would have to return on another date and talk to someone from the City Attorney's office and then I could finally have my day in court, or my second day in court, as it were. Maybe.

I was called fourth in line. Two people had already pled guilty and, as the culture has dictated these many years in various misdemeanor courts, if you go to the trouble of throwing yourself upon the mercy of the court, you have performed a form of plea bargaining, and you get a lower penalty than you otherwise would; one fellow, for instance, got his fine lowered from $195 to $100. I supposed that's what I could have done--maybe, say, have it shaved down to ten bucks or something. But damn it, I wasn't guilty. I had done nothing inappropriate or wrong or illegal. I would continue the fight.

Turns out I was to report right back there in a week at the same time on that next Monday morning. The hearing, as it were, was to be performed live, but on a laptop or phone--a carryover, the directive said, from Covid days. That might cause a problem. I had a couple of photos to show the magistrate, as well as the phone number the landlord had given me, and although apparently that hadn't worked in step one, it might on step three. I would come in with distinct advantages, though: I knew exactly where I was going this time, so no anxiety would result; I had already gone through a process that was nowhere near as daunting as I thought it would be; and, of course, I would finally have a decision made on it.

The "hearing" that took place, if you want to call it that, happened through a window (again, to avoid Covid) in a waiting room that couldn't, by any measure, be called a courtroom. This time, someone from the city attorney's office held the conference. He informed me, first, that if I lost my case, the worst that would happen is that I would be charged the original cost of the ticket, or $40. That, I assumed, was mentioned upfront as a guarantee that my own costs needn't be too overbearing, and that, if I were to dispense with all this bother, all I would have to do is to report to the pay booth on another floor, write out the corresponding check, and that would be that. Thus constituted the plea bargain, which of course wasn't one except to save everyone time for a minor issue, compared to the other things that city government has to deal with.

It's not as if that hadn't occurred to me, though, and I wanted assurance that this nonsense would never again happen. It had occurred to me that, since the original ticket had been issued some ten weeks beforehand and no other ticket had been issued--they weren't stalking me, at least--the bureaucracy had somehow gotten hold of the fact that they had committed a goof and had backed away, as they certainly should. But--there was left the 40 bucks that I, being the unfortunate pawn of someone's loss of temper for no reason, I still owed. The attorney offered me a cut rate, that of 20 dollars, if I would admit no contest. It amounted to a plea bargain: I would plead nolo contendere and write out a check.

Then there was the Constitution. There's a place where my concerns could be addressed: the 7th Amendment. That amendment guarantees that, in cases where the cost is over 20 dollars, I could have a civil trial, or whatever constituted one. So what the city attorney was actually offering me was a deal where I would give up my right to have a trial, a bargain rate, and a plea of guilty for something I hadn't done wrong or even badly. Again, I didn't feel like admitting that. So I said no--firmly, decisively, and with no hesitation.

So I walked back to the courtroom where they provided yet another hearing date, this time with some literature accompanying me. To wit: Since I had just decided to take on the court to prove my innocence, how best to do that? The advice was pretty simple: Hearsay evidence probably won't do me much good; get my facts in order; and rehearse what I was going to say.

I didn't have real solid facts, I had to admit. But I did have an e-mail sent out by the person in charge of parking for the rental company. About a month after the event, he had obviously heard from someone who, really angry about not very much, had insisted that someone was parked in his exact spot. Except he didn't have an exact spot, as neither did I. He alerted everyone, then, of something that nearly everyone already knew--anyone paying for renting a space could park in any of the 16 spaces without penalty. 

That kind of evidence could only be described as circumstantial, but it might just work, I figured. Why else would he have sent out the e-mail if there hadn't been a misunderstanding? That's pretty much all I had, but at least I had more than my verbal testimony.

I figured it was worth the gamble. I wasn't working, either, so I had the time to appear. But there would be one more attempt to get me to, I suppose they thought, come to my senses. That would be December 1. Once more, they would make an offer. Once more, I would have to say no. Hmmmm. Maybe I could bring the e-mail and show it to them. Maybe that would do it. I waited, this time patiently.

Eleven days prior, I received a call from the city attorney's office. It was from someone else other than the fellow who had made the first offer. He identified himself as the person who would be prosecuting my case. It felt odd that I would be the recipient of a prosecution; one would think that one would be in court for a serious matter, not this foolishness. But in the lexicon of the legal community, there was nothing else to call him. I would be coming to the stand, and he would be grilling me about this less-than-heinous violation I'd allegedly committed.

Except it was clear that he wanted to handle this over the phone, if at all possible. He focused for a moment at the difference between the address of the ticket itself and my address, which is actually next door in the same building. He thought he could get me there. But I explained myself accurately enough, so that the next question was: Who are the people renting out the spaces, and can I get hold of them? You should be able to do that, I said, and gave them the landlord's name.

This was at about five minutes to 4 on a Thursday. Less than five minutes later, he called me back, also e-mailing me with his decision that he would be recommending to the court that the case be dismissed. Oddly, instead of writing "dismissed" on the e-mail, he wrote "DM", which might have been what in their processes they were supposed to do. But he added that that didn't necessarily eliminate my need to report to court on December 1.

That, I thought, would be the final comedic conclusion to this fiasco. Would I really have to show up, stand there like a dolt, and have the attorney officially dismiss my case--all for a silly parking ticket? But, as had to be true, he had no power to actually dismiss the case; all he could do was recommend it.

At least he got it where it was supposed to go with some dispatch. The very next morning, I received a call from the municipal court: Yes, the case was dismissed; and no, I wouldn't have to actually show up to have someone declare it as such. His docket was cleared. So was the judge's. So was mine.

At last, it was over, more than three months after the original ticket had been issued. Not exactly the efficient dispensation of justice, but I doubt that the taxpayers would go for better funding to open more parking courts. 

I wonder whether the legal system in larger municipalities like Chicago or Houston or LA shuttled you into a similar maelstrom, or if they created even more levels for someone to overcome. They were bigger cities. There had to be plenty more parking violations.

Never mind. I had other things to attend to, like the very slow draining of my kitchen sink. I had to wait forever for it to empty. Funny: It felt like the same thing.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark