Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Chicago parking tickets

The city known for ghost voters also has ghost parking signage, it would seem:

[Heather Thome] was dismayed when she returned to find a police officer had just written a ticket for violating a parking ban from 4 to 6 p.m.

“I asked him where the sign was,” said Thome, 35, a temp worker. “He said there used to be a sign on ‘that’ pole, and it hasn’t been there for two years. My logical question was, ‘How can you write a ticket?’ And he told me he doesn’t want to, but his boss tells him he has to go out every day and write tickets.” … She [appealed but] still was found liable.

(Gary Washburn, “City rakes in revenue from tickets”, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 12). More: Cernovich.

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8 Comments

  • That’s just plain corrupt. No person should be subject to civil fines without notice. This sets a bad precedent. There’s not much incentive to put a new sign up if you can still fine drivers for parking there. In fact, you don’t want to because a sign would reduce fine revenue. Why have parking signs anywhere in the city? Take them all down and let people park where they want. Sure, they’ll have to guess whether or not they’ll get a ticket, but so what? It’s not as if the lack of a sign is a bar to levying a fine on a driver.

  • As if I needed yet another reason to avoid Chicago like the plague.

    I really don’t understand why anyone still lives there.

    • By Deoxy

  • I got hit by something similar years ago when I parked (in Oak Park, IL) across the street from an all-night diner (in Cicero, IL). Seems that Oak Park had banned parking between 2-6 AM and never bothered to put up any signs. In fact, I didn’t even know that side of the street was Oak Park. Fortunately, the fine was only $1.

    • By DAV

  • Wait, wait! Read the next story and then Ted can tell us we should have read the civil statutes!

    • By JOhn

  • I remember when I was at university, walking along a street adjacent to the school where students parked for free. A crew was going along installing meters at the curb, and a meter maid followed them and wrote a ticket for each vehicle which was now suddenly in violation.

    • By Platy

  • And just because our “Democratic” mayor loves us so, traffic citations are no longer heard in court, they are now administrative proceeding, where you dont have a hope in hell! Daley’s boys put up traffic camera’s that give ticket as you pass through lights with extra short yellows, ooops 20 million a year in just the 3rd full year, and more camera’s comming. We have impound yards for booted and towed cars that go on for acres, overflowing with the cars of those too poor to pay the tickets and towing and the storage fees. You pay or they sell the car, $7000 car, goes for $4500, you owe $450, SCREW YOU, YOU GET NADA! Our boot trucks are state of the art, they use AI, and camera’s with visual recognition, so they can scan the plates on both sides of the street on the fly, run them for overdue tickets, and only stop to boot.

    The Democratic Party of The City of Chicago,”kindness and compassion” as only DEMOCRATS CAN! and I thought only Republicans understood how to balance a budget?

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