My son has been driving his girlfriends parents vehicle around so it would not be idle. He parked the car on the side street. Unbeknownst to us, there is a state and town statute that prevents cars from being parked on public streets for more than 24 hours and received not 1, but two tickets. Since he is in school and not really sure when he would have time to go through the appeal process, I told him I would call and speak to the officers.
I spoke to a police sergeant and told him that I thought the tickets should not have been written because there is no way to know that you cannot park there for 24 hours without moving the vehicle. He told me that the town was not going to post signs for these types of violations. I asked why? We have speed limit signs, stop signs, no parking signs, left turn only, right turn only, no parking from here to curb, yield, one way, etc. I asked the officer how is one to know that they are in violation of the law when they do not know that law even exists. Everyone knows that stealing, murder, rape, abduction, etc is illegal, but the only way to communicate about traffic is to use some type of sign. His response was it would cost the town way too much money and it would look ugly, but I told him that before the school shut down, there were signs posted about no parking for 24 hours and you could not part between 7AM and 4PM. So I told him that the only way to learn about these laws is to then get a ticket. His response was that the statutes are not hidden. However, where I grew up there were no such statutes for parking on the street, so how is one to know that these laws exist. He did tell me that I could appeal the tickets and that he thought I had a very good argument, but the decision was the judges.
I went on to state I read the Statutes that were cited and I do not see how they were applicable. He asked me to send him the tickets, but I only had photos. He accepted the photos and in about 10 minutes he called me back and said that the he would take back the tickets which he normally did not do. However, since I had found mistakes in that the wrong statutes were cited, he thought that was justification enough.
I did tell him that the one of the officers went and talked to the person where the vehicle was registered and told them that if they did not move the vehicle it would be towed. They did not have to do that, but I thought it was very nice of them to do so. They called my son who came and moved it that night.
The police officers who wrote the tickets were just doing their job and I was in no way upset with them, but felt that they were wrong in this case. I did not get upset when speaking to the sergeant, but remained calm and hopefully spoke with enough intelligence to convey my point.
I believe that God was helping us out. I could have easily gotten mad or I could have said the wrong thing or nothing at all or I could have just let my son go pay the tickets. In the end, it all worked out and I thank God and give Him all the glory because I truly believe he was speaking to me on what to say.