Institutionalized misfortune
Recently, I got a parking ticket. My transgression was parking on a Bloomfield residential street without an appropriate residential parking permit. Such permits, in Pittsburgh, have the form of a sticker that adheres to the inside of the rearmost driver-side window--in Bloomfield these stickers bear an "H". The fine was $25 (the permit itself costs $20 annually).
When I first saw the slip of paper pinned under my windshield wiper, from the window of my 3rd-floor apartment, I couldn't imagine why I had gotten a ticket. The streets are not cleaned in the winter, and, unlike the narrow alleys of the South Side, there is no need to keep the streets clear for trash collection. Then I realized: my car no longer had a permit.
Undaunted, I called Pittsburgh Parking Court and scheduled a hearing for the next Wednesday at 10 a.m. When I arrived I took a seat near two young, professional-looking women in business attire. I imagine they are attractive, if you like that sort of thing. One of them had a $90 ticket for parking in a fire lane. Both of them had the plan of saying to the judge, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was doing anything wrong. I promise I won't do it again." After their hearings, neither of them had to pay a cent. Surely, I thought, if that was reason enough for a judgment of "not guilty," my reason could not fail to be as well.
So I told the judge, an old man who mumbled so that one could barely understand him, why I had gotten the ticket. "Someone smashed the window of my car, the one that had the permit on it, and stole my stereo," I told him. "I had just had the window replaced the day before I was ticketed."
I offered to show him the invoice from the glass company to prove that this was true. His response was, "That doesn't help me, I need to see your permit." I wanted to show it to him; really, truly I did. Unfortunately, it had gone the way of the window. After knocking $9 off of my fine as some kind of bonus for just showing up, presumably so that I would not feel I had entirely wasted my time, he told me, "You had better get it qualified," and, "You can appeal me to [unintelligible mumbling]."
I paid the $16. It cost me just over $200 to replace the window, and the stereo that was stolen cost nearly $100. I take this to be a proof that the magnitude of an injustice is not correlated with the amount of money it costs the injured party.
When I first saw the slip of paper pinned under my windshield wiper, from the window of my 3rd-floor apartment, I couldn't imagine why I had gotten a ticket. The streets are not cleaned in the winter, and, unlike the narrow alleys of the South Side, there is no need to keep the streets clear for trash collection. Then I realized: my car no longer had a permit.
Undaunted, I called Pittsburgh Parking Court and scheduled a hearing for the next Wednesday at 10 a.m. When I arrived I took a seat near two young, professional-looking women in business attire. I imagine they are attractive, if you like that sort of thing. One of them had a $90 ticket for parking in a fire lane. Both of them had the plan of saying to the judge, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was doing anything wrong. I promise I won't do it again." After their hearings, neither of them had to pay a cent. Surely, I thought, if that was reason enough for a judgment of "not guilty," my reason could not fail to be as well.
So I told the judge, an old man who mumbled so that one could barely understand him, why I had gotten the ticket. "Someone smashed the window of my car, the one that had the permit on it, and stole my stereo," I told him. "I had just had the window replaced the day before I was ticketed."
I offered to show him the invoice from the glass company to prove that this was true. His response was, "That doesn't help me, I need to see your permit." I wanted to show it to him; really, truly I did. Unfortunately, it had gone the way of the window. After knocking $9 off of my fine as some kind of bonus for just showing up, presumably so that I would not feel I had entirely wasted my time, he told me, "You had better get it qualified," and, "You can appeal me to [unintelligible mumbling]."
I paid the $16. It cost me just over $200 to replace the window, and the stereo that was stolen cost nearly $100. I take this to be a proof that the magnitude of an injustice is not correlated with the amount of money it costs the injured party.
posted by gregates at 5:43 AM
1 Comments:
I had to go to traffic court once. When my case came up, the judge said, "Blecher? That's the worst name I ever heard. I hope there's no Mrs. Blecher." Now there is a Mrs. Blecher—my mother. But I told him that I had a wife, and she chose not to take my name. He seemed to approve. Then he said, "Case dismissed." I said, "Don't you want to hear my story?" He said, "For $16, I don't really care." Moral of the story: if you want justice, don't go to traffic court.
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