Rhino's Ramblings - Justice In The Age Of COVID
By Robert Thomas Opinion/Commentary
It has been sitting in my desk drawer now for literally months.
It is something that I forget about but every once in awhile I receive a letter in the mail reminding me about my serious offense I need to deal with from the Moose Jaw Police Service (MJPS).
It is a crime that I have allegedly committed that I actually get some mail, other than bills, in my fancy Super Mailbox every once in awhile and I am quite honestly prepared to face punishment for. But at the same time diligently defend myself for.
What is my crime that I keep getting notices of appearance for?
Well it is the high crime of breaking Section 23(e) of Moose Jaw bylaw #5556.
For those who are not up on your bylaws my infraction is “park a vehicle in an expired meter stall” when it is expired.
And for this serious offense I have been summoned to court for the simple reason I never pay my parking fines in currency - ever.
But I do plug my meters, don’t get me wrong but I no longer leave change in my console as it dissuades would be thieves from breaking into my car. Something the police say is driven by the addiction crisis that grips our city.
No I am not one of those people who have racked up unpaid parking tickets that are rapidly approaching almost a million dollars of various fines and not remitted the penalty to the Crown, or in this case the City of Moose Jaw. I actually do the fine option thing and work a bingo.
That is another issue the City is trying to deal with $925,000 in unpaid parking tickets that lay there just ready to fill the City’s coffers if they can ever find a way to collect them.
As Jason G Antonio reported in the Moose Jaw Express the fines go back at least a decade in some cases with one motorist out there allegedly thumbing their nose at City Hall wracking up somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000 in parking fines for 225 tickets.
The stuff of Moose Jaw legend and lore - either one of the most disrespectful individuals out there in the community or a modern day illegal parking Robin Hood - thumbing their nose at authority and the coin slot machines that inundate the Downtown but NEVER pay out. Any gambler will tell you the parking meters are 100 percent rigged in favour of the House or in this case the City of Moose Jaw.
Perhaps in a generation or two this will be something the tourism people could market.
As by then most people will remember this alleged parking bandit with about $20,000 in unpaid parking fines as the descendant of one of Al Capone’s various notorious romps while on the lamb in what that time was known as the Prairie Oasis of the west.
No I am not related to Al Capone. I actually do pay for my Downtown parking infractions but never in cash - I just work them off at bingo. Instead of volunteering for an evening, as I usually do, I am there as a convicted parking criminal.
It is hard to explain but my good friend the late Russ McKnight use to call me on short notice all of the time and asked if I felt up to working a bingo for an assortment of groups in the city.
Russ is gone now and I suppose in a roundabout way the parking meters and their fines have replaced him when it comes to volunteering.
People always ask me how can you smile and be so happy when working a bingo? How do I tell them it makes me remember all of the good times with Russ working now countless bingos? It is just that simple.
I even have some of bingo hall clientele ask me “What kind of crime did you do to end up here?”
When I tell them “overstaying my time at a parking meter” many of them laugh but others do not believe me. Others still tell me how they just hate the parking meters and “good for you sticking it to the Man” or “that will show City Hall I hate those effin things.”
I usually work the bingo for the Moose Jaw Seniors and even had their former administrator ask me once if I had any more parking tickets as they could use a volunteer. I actually told her “I will see what I can do” and then promptly got a couple of tickets to help them out.
I use to do the same thing when the late Lyle Helland was looking after Memorial Field.
I would see Lyle at the Warriors game and he would ask if I had any parking tickets I needed to work off because he could use a hand over at Memorial Field. And yes on more than a couple of occasions I also ended up over staying a parking meter and ended up helping Lyle at the field in early May.
Lyle actually was a great guy to help out and it gave him and the late Judge Gerry King something to razz me about the three or four times a year I went to a Warriors game.
Now back to the story…..
But in order to work off your parking tickets you have to attend court, plead guilty and then ask for time to pay and take some paperwork over to the John Howard Society who sets it up with the bingo hall.
And yes it seems like a lot of paperwork to handle a $50 fine, but that is the system. I do not know for sure but in paperwork alone it has to be well over the cost of the $50 parking violation - but this is the machinery of the bureaucracy and you have to follow it.
I can remember the first time I showed up in court for a parking ticket and the sergeant for the MJPS asked me what was I there for? When I replied a parking ticket she said “nobody shows up for those.”
But well I did.
In a few short words though the sergeant ironically may have ominously summed up the massive number of unpaid parking tickets the City has to find a way to deal with. It is almost like nobody gives a damn.
And so I had my first date in court as an alleged parking desperado. It was a case I actually won for the most part.
All I had to do was ask about the whereabouts of the parking regulations.
When they looked through the tickets they almost immediately threw out a few of them as they were not validly written under the Bylaw regulations.
Regulations not adopted by Council or the MJPS but apparently by a former commissionaire who was shown the door by the MJPS and apparently took whatever regulations he had dreamt up with him. The new traffic bylaw fixed that oversight. Because I did my research I had only to spend one evening “volunteering” at bingo and not there as a repeat offender.
I am sort of wondering if maybe the lack of real approved regulations for more than a few years might just clean up a good portion of the historic parking fines the City of Moose Jaw is right now trying to figure out how to collect. If they take a look at all of those parking tickets before they adopted officially written down regulations the City may well clear off a major number of those outstanding parking fines.
Now can you imagine what Bylaw court is like in the age of the COVID - 19 pandemic?
Well I got my parking ticket on October 20, 2020 - while attending the Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners meeting at the Grant Hall Hotel - and now because of the pandemic my court case has been delayed for a second time.
And each time it is dismissed they have to mail out notices when the next court date is from the administrator of parking infractions whose office is located somewhere in the bowels of the MJPS headquarters. And yes she actually exists.
She is a really nice lady and is actually very accessible through the phone number on the parking ticket.
If you look at the date of my alleged parking violation it is now six months old.
The MJPS has been re-scheduling the court room and then re-booking everyone’s court dates. Plus mailing out legal notices.
The paperwork on so, so many parking tickets must be filling a good drawer of a filing cabinet given the number of people who do not pay off their parking tickets in one way or another.
A growing stack of manila coloured files, full of officially notarized in triplicate documents, rapidly becoming the envy of red tape proponents the world over.
I was suppose to attend court and have this serious matter dealt with this past Tuesday but once again COVID - 19 has cancelled the court date.
I asked about when the next court date is scheduled and was told that it would be “likely in a couple of months” all depending on the pandemic but I would get my notice to appear in the mail “sometime in the future.”
It sounds kind of ominous to me.
That is the situation the courts are in right now.
They cannot dispense justice for the simplest of matters as everything is being put off due to the COVID - 19 pandemic. And the paperwork and expense it entails is growing on both the Crown and the Defense side of the equation.
It is a major Justis Interuptus predicament the courts are finding themselves in.
Front counters of both court houses (Queens Bench and Provincial Court) have been closed to the public for months jamming up people’s access to the justice system.
Whether it be the curious and journalists who want to examine the court records or those who chose to self-defend themselves there is no physical access. You have to pay for the entire file at the Court of Queens Bench - instead of the pages you want - albeit at a cost of $1 per page.
I have actually sat through a session of Provincial Court a few months ago and the Crown Prosecutor stayed over six charges of an alleged serial shoplifter. What this means is if she quits her alleged stealing from WalMart for a year she will not face anymore prosecution for those offences.
It all just went on and on that day as more and more charges were simply stayed placing the accused in what amounts to a one year probationary period where if the alleged perpetrator is a good person for a year then what they had been accused of never happened in the eyes of the law. The charges won’t be coming back and you are innocent in the eyes of the law I suppose at least.
It had me thinking had the Crown taken the time to inform the victim of the alleged crime(s) about what really amounts to the courts saying “this never happened?” Or did this sense of desperation I felt in the Crown Prosecutor’s voice and demeanour to move on and clear the file and case load just the nature of the legal beast?
They say that justice does not come cheap. I can believe it when it comes to the stack of paperwork that is growing in the justice system.
So I know that there are those out there who are going to just say to me “pay the damn ticket” or “how did you get this ticket?”
As I said previously I got the parking ticket for allegedly overstaying at a parking meter while at the Police Commissioners meeting. Something I whole-heartedly support receiving - nobody should be above the law and everybody treated equally. I should have gone outside and moved my car as I allegedly admit I allegedly did maybe over park.
But I suppose I should give a better explanation as to the reasons why my alleged offense happened.
On that date the Police Commission heard the sordid details of former MJPS police constable Alan Murdock. And following the tell all meeting there was an opportunity to address press questions where Chief Rick Bourassa re-stated the open and accountable nature of the MJPS.
Following this I asked Chief Bourassa and Deputy Chief Rick Johns about another criminal case I had been following very closely. It is how a group of victims had come forward with their allegations and their concerns to the MJPS and despite being allegedly threatened, bullied, intimidated and having things physically done to their property they still gave lengthy and detailed statements.
For myself I truly believe they have very valid concerns - but I am no lawyer - the lawyer I did speak to about this case said the allegations appeared to be valid.
So I approached the Chief and Deputy Chief about the entire matter and received re-assurances it was being looked at and the alleged victims would at least be contacted to tell them what happened with the criminal complaint they had bravely filed a couple of years prior. I was told to have them call the MJPS - something that they did and left a phone message.
Justice I suppose prevails. If you stick at it. They can at least be rest assured they are being afforded the opportunity to know what happened to their complaints as victims.
And that is why I overstayed my meter. And yes the ticket is valid - 100 percent - I just need the opportunity to go to court, face justice and make arrangements to work it off. I am guilty of this alleged transgression against the norm.
As for the alleged victims in the criminal matter I questioned the top brass in the MJPS about they never received the promised response. I suppose that is what happens to justice, common decency and openness in a world of COVID - 19.