Posted on 06/01/2016 8:43:05 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Brett Sanders fought the law, and the law won.
Namely, two buckets full of pennies.
More than 22,000 of them.
The Friso, Texas man was incredulous the city police cited him for going nine miles over the speed limit.
And, he was livid a jury decided he deserved the ticket.
So, when the city ordered Sanders to pay $212 in fines, he figured he’d make the payment as inconvenient as possible.
He decided to pay Frisco in pennies.
“I was on my residential street when I got a ticket for going nine miles over the speed limit,” he told CNN. “I thought it was unfair. I did not injure anyone, and I did not endanger anyone.”
So, he got the coins from a bank, painted two buckets with the words “Extortion payment,” headed to the Frisco Municipal Court and dumped the pennies on the counter.
And, this being the age of virality, he made sure to catch it all on video and post it on YouTube.
“Not only am I [ticked] off about this ticket and paying with pennies to clog up the system, but I also want to protest the whole racket,” he said.
The city of Frisco wouldn’t specifically comment on what they thought of the incident.
But, spokeswoman Dana Baird told CNN the pennies were counted using two coin-cashing machines – and took staffers about three hours.
Sanders’ original fine was $79.90 and court costs were $132.10 for a total of $212.00, Baird said.
“There was an overpayment of $7.81,” she said.
Baird said the city can keep the change.
I work on the nicer side of town - lots of police hiding in the bushes (literally, on motorcycles behind the sidewalk and in the bushes) with a RADAR gun and ticket pad.
I have never seen the motorcycle cops in the bad part of town, where the crime happens.
But many states have laws which specify that payment of public utilities, fees or fines only in a single fraction of the standard currency.
That means only 99 pennies, max.
People have been doing this for DECADES. That’s why they made the laws.
I have thought about this before... however if a judge gets wind of it, he will call the person into the court room and under contempt make them count out the change penny by penny. Which is a legit thing to have the judge do. That is why I did not do it.
But, spokeswoman Dana Baird told CNN the pennies were counted using two
coin-cashing machines – and took staffers about three hours.
**************
And wasted a few employee hours when a deposit at the bank on their next run would have
taken care of the counting process via the bank’s change counters.
There's an old adage about not crapping where you sleep. It applies here. Don't speed in residential areas, especially your own.
Other areas, I think the design of the road, and visibility should play a factor in the speed limit, not politicians.
If the road can sustain 50 MPH traffic, then it shouldn't be reduced by bureaucrats to 35 MPH.
:: “I thought it was unfair. I did not injure anyone, and I did not endanger anyone” ::
Note: No disavowing of the speeding citation. Just a statement that, for all intents and purposes says, he should be allowed to exceed the posted limit as long he doesn’t cause an accident or strike someone.
Question: Who fights a speeding citation with a jury trial? Really? I must assume he was representing himself and, as the saying goes, he had a moron for legal counsel.
Exactly. They’re there to generate revenue. That’s all.
So he admits to going 9 miles over the speed limit, and then complains he got a ticket...
In a RESIDENTIAL area...!
How fast does he think they should let him go over the speed limit before it is ‘fair’ to stop him?
HE should not be surprised if he gets some more tickets soon- I suspect we will hear more from him. 1 mile over the speed limit is enough, if they really want to stop you. (And I think they do, now)
More cops know who he is, now that he’s had his 15 minutes of fame and notoriety, and when he gets pulled over and ticketed for doing 6 mph over the limit, what’s he gonna say to that?
Cities get very little revenue from traffic tickets.
...which is still a very bad thing in a neighborhood.
OK, most of us see posted speed limits as guidelines rather than actual limits, and expect to slide if they keep it less than 10 over. Fine on a highway, not so much in a school zone. That said, he WAS speeding. He got caught. What exactly was he protesting?
Indeed.
In residential areas, when you exceed a certain speed, you lose your license, and are arrested. This is a huge hassle for the officer, as it takes him off his beat, lots of paperwork, then appearing in court. If the person ticketed was decent to the officer, he will only cite them the max speed before hitting the “mark”, your probably right.
Most of the time the driver is appreciative that it could have been much worse. In this case, in hindsight, the guy should have been arrested, the car impounded, and possibly the person would have lost his license. According to his comments, he did not learn the lesson that a ticket attempts to teach most sane, responsible people.
I learned an interesting thing when I last renewed my TX vehicle registration. Namely, for convenience, you can re-register at a local Kroger’s. However, that option is is not available if your registration renewal is annotated with “scofflaw”, or other things.
Source: http://access.tarrantcounty.com/en/tax/motor-vehicle/other-registration-renewal-locations.html
I suspect that when it comes time to re-register his vehicle, this fellow will get a surprise.
That, and given that it’s obvious that the Texas DMV tracks such things, I’d suspect it also means that the next time he encounters the constabulary, it will not go so well for him.
You can imagine what this asshole’s attitude was when he was pulled over. Doing a third again the speed limit and I’ll bet a dollar he gave the cop a ration of shit, and that’s what earned him the ticket.
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