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Man angry at parking ticket chases and attacks Cambridge parking officer, police say
By adamg on Tue, 02/04/2020 - 1:51pm
Updated with additional info from Cambridge PD.
Cambridge Police report a man upset at getting a ticket in Harvard Square yesterday afternoon expressed his displeasure by chasing after the parking officer who'd written the ticket, kicking him in the shins and shoving the ticket down the parking officer's jacket.
The man, a Brockton resident, erupted in rage at Appian Way and Brattle Street around 3:50 p.m., police say. The man was charged with assault and battery on a public employee, threatening to commit a crime and mutilation of a parking ticket.
The police report:
BROCKTON MAN began to chase PARKING CONTROL OFFICER, kicking him in the shins, stating he was going to trip him. BROCKTON MAN then crumpled up the ticket, and shoved it down PARKING CONTROL OFFICER jacket, at the neckline, while doing so PARKING CONTROL OFFICER was hit in the eye and face. PARKING CONTROL OFFICER was transported to XXXX Hospital by Professional Ambulance for an evaluation of his eye.
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Comments
So glad to know
that mutilation of a parking ticket is a crime. Forewarned is forewarned.
a violent sociopath driving a car in our fair commonwealth?
well now I have heard everything
Seems doubtful he was on Appian Way...
To get from Rome to the Adriatic Sea...
But more importantly, someone should tell him the Brockton tough guy routine doesn't quite fly in Cambridge...and a sentence of a few hours of community service will drive home that point
Doesn't work in Brockton either
Go to any town in the Commonwealth and assault a public official and see what happens.
He might have gotten the ticket dismissed if he filed an appeal but no DA is going to drop assault charges against a public employee.
Dismissed in Cambridge? No
Dismissed in Cambridge? No amount of photographic evidence could get that to happen. They're the masters at upholding blatantly bogus tickets.
I hope this jackass gets the
judicial equivalent of a South Park Rochambeau with an explanation that it's wrong to confuse the message with the messenger.
No excuse for violence, but sometimes they are the same
I've had more than one situation where the ticket was outright wrong and the person writing it refused to change it, like the time I was ticketed before I had a chance to get out of the car and put money in the meter.
Doesn't excuse violence, but let's not assume the parking officer was completely innocent.
I remember double-parking in front of my South End place,
getting out of the car to unpack my groceries from the trunk, and there was a BTD officer already writing me a ticket. That just made me laugh: I was guilty, after all, but I thought I'd have maybe 30 seconds to act. Nope.
I recently fed a South End meter, dropped two quarters in before I realized it wasn't registering any time. I ran my five-minute errand, came back to a meter-violation ticket. I have appealed that one (still waiting to hear), but had I come out in time and been able to show the officer that it didn't work, I would not have lost it if they wrote it anyway.
Once they start writing, so I've heard, they have to complete it, wrong or not. I'm not one to scream at a wall anymore, especially since I consider it likely that these officers have to put up with tons of unwarranted abuse every single day of their working lives.
I only yelled
when the guy refused to write me a note verifying that I'd been in the car. He spent more time arguing with me than it would have taken to write it (I offered paper and pen), insisting it "wasn't his job" to write that he'd been incorrect.
I did get it dismissed (fortunately, I worked within walking distance of where I had to appeal), only to receive a mailed citation a few months later for not paying a ticket I'd never received for parking someplace I hadn't been (had proof I was at an appointment far from there at the time.)
Boo hoo!
Your bully tactics didn’t work.
The parking officer might
The parking officer might have been wrong, but he's still innocent. Did I detect a hint of victim blaming?
There is a means to challenge a parking ticket
And it doesn’t involve yelling at the parking enforcement officer. I’m 2 for 2 with appealing parking tickets in Boston, and in the case of the first ticket, a note with photographs avoided even a hearing.
How nice for you
that you can afford the time to spend appealing.
If a parking officer is blatantly wrong in writing out a ticket, most people will just have to swallow it. I would never punch one of them, but I probably would take their picture and engage in as much social media shaming as I could of them and their bosses.
Do you have time to comment on UHub?
Then you have time to appeal a ticket online.
Then they don't dismiss it
Then they don't dismiss it and you have to go to a hearing in the middle of a work day or eat it.
...OR they could not be so aggressive that people get so many erroneous tickets.
Maybe Ibbsie needs ...
.... a trauma pedicure. LOL!
Lose the entitled nonsense
Take a long walk. Violence against a civil servant? Guy should be in jail.
P.S. Ever wonder why people standing/loading while double parked or in the bike lane don't get tickets from parking meter enforcement? This is why. They're worried about being assaulted or battered.
Should have used Smaht Pahk
Should have used Smaht Pahk
Impressive
He turned a $35 problem into a several thousand dollar probably. Figure out how to apply this skill in reverse for endless profit.