I had to go to court on Monday. Well, if I’d paid the parking ticket I wouldn’t have had to go to court, but I don’t like bending to my local councils cash grabs, which was all this is, every year they see where you’re parked and issue you with a council parking violation ticket, this one was around $80, US.
Now like a lot of local councils ours has been infiltrated by hippies and greenies who would fine you for farting and producing greenhouse gas. They’re so corrupt that their first attempt at issuing parking fines was during COVID lockdowns when everyone was working from home (if they were lucky enough to keep their jobs) and due to so many objections they withdrew the fines, but they came back with a vengeance and have been fining us for parking on the sidewalk (footpath, nature strip, etc, depending on where you’re from, so every year I’ve been sending them back and ticking the box to say I’ll go to court.
Well finally after 3 years I received a summons to go to court on Monday. As it turned out, my courtroom was just for people from my area who had received parking fines. I was getting a little pissed off because I’d been there for 2 3/4 hours before my case came up, but it was good as I’d had time to listen to other people’s excuses and saw the reaction from the prosecution and the magistrate and I was able to see what punishment they copped.
The magistrate was female and appeared pretty fair so if the other folks pleaded guilty they were either found guilty or innocent, if guilty the magistrate took in consideration that they’d pleaded guilty and didn’t make them pay the fine, but they had to pay court costs (averaging between $70 and $120) and had to accept a “good behaviour” bond for 3 months. (If they break the law for anything in that 3 months they had to pay the original fine/s plus whatever they get for their other crimes)
Anyway, I finally came up, and told the magistrate a much shorter version of what really happened, (mostly BS, infused with a modicum of the truth) and I was very happy that the magistrate swallowed my story hook, line and sinker, and I was found not guilty. That made me happy as it was the first “Not Guilty” judgement the magistrate had made all morning. Obviously I didn’t hang around to see how the other folks made out after me, but I did wonder if anyone else got off completely…..