A motorist filed a federal lawsuit against Chicago, Illinois police officers who issued twenty-four bogus parking tickets against him over the course of fourteen months. The tickets arrived in groups of three and four and were for violations that frequently contradicted one another, requiring the vehicle to be in more than one place at a time. Mark Geinosky suspects they conspired against him to extract revenge on behalf of his ex-wife.
“Plaintiff alleges that he received tickets for violations which never occurred, and which the defendant officers knew had not occurred, as part of a deliberate campaign by officers in Unit 253 to harass him,” Geinosky’s lawyer wrote in a brief to the court. “Plaintiff was forced, over and over again, to respond to bogus parking tickets which the defendant officers gave him for malicious reasons.”
Mark Geinosky separated from his wife of twenty years, Sharon, on October 6, 2007. As part of their separation, Sharon Geinosky continued to drive a Toyota that had been registered in Mark Geinosky’s name. Within twelve days, Mark Geinosky began receiving parking tickets in the mail in groups of three and four worth around $300 per set. Alleged violations included parking in front of a fire hydrant, parking in a crosswalk and blocking a roadway.
Over several months, Geinosky contested each citation and won before administrative law officers who separately found all the tickets to be unfounded. When Geinosky filed a complaint with the police internal affairs division, he was blown off by an officer who explained the division did not investigate parking tickets. In September 2008, Geinosky sold the Toyota and got himself a new license plate. Nonetheless, on October 7, Officers Kenneth Wilkerson issued three more tickets worth $250 for parking at 7379 South Chicago at 10pm.
“In fact, it was impossible for Plaintiff to commit the alleged violations as he was no longer in possession of the Toyota,” Geinosky attorney Louis J. Meyer wrote.
Another batch of tickets arrived in December and Geinosky saw no alternative but to call the Chicago Tribune to draw attention to his plight. In March 2010, Geinosky filed suit against Wilkerson and his fellow Chicago Police Officers Steven Sabatino, Horst Hegewald, William Whelehan, Paul Roque, Jennifer Fregeau, Brian Reidy and Luis Aguilar. All were assigned to Unit 253. For their part, the police officers denied any wrongdoing through the city attorneys who argued that Geinosky has already seen justice done.
“Although he successfully contested each of these tickets before an administrative law officer, plaintiff now asserts that he is entitled to recover compensatory and punitive damages for violations of his constitutional rights,” city of Chicago attorney Colleen G. DeRosa wrote. “Thus, plaintiff has not alleged any deficiency in the appeals process, as he successfully exercised his rights and each of these tickets has been dismissed.”
Also argued that the statute of limitations is two years for a Section 1983 claim
“Defendants’ alleged issuance of parking tickets constitutes discretionary police conduct that falls beyond the parameters of an actionable class of one equal protection claim,” DeRosa wrote.
The suit is ongoing before the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
[Courtesy:Thenewspaper.com]
I know how that works.
My wife was arrested and handcuffed, taken to the county jail, and booked for criminal trespassing. She did not trespass, but a disgruntled police officer, who was moonlighting by building a fence for a next-door neighbor with a longstanding grudge against us, lied in court saying that she did trespass (about 6 inches) into the extreme corner of the neighbor’s 1-acre yard by the street. The temperamental judge of course bought the police officer’s version and convicted her (30 days suspended, no fine).
My wife’s most telling reaction: “This is America?”
30 day suspension of what? Driver’s license? Was she driving on his property or just walking?
30 days suspended of jail time. She was pulling out a rusty re-bar that had mysteriously been planted at the corner of the property — in the ditch where we need to mow. Her feet were on our side of the property line.
Good luck to him. Suing any civil servant, policeman, school teacher, building official, bus driver etc. is pointless.
The government will defend him with taxpayer money through numerous tribunals until the plaintiff gives up from financial or psychological exhaustion. Even if he ultimately prevails the civil servant will not be reprimanded and the taxpayers will pay the penalty.
This is the city of Chicago we are talking about. The city has averaged about $9 million per year in legal settlements until last year when they took a new approach – fight everything until the bitter end – which simply delays the inevitable while they wait for the cases to wind their way through the legal system. So they only paid out around $2 million in 2009. But so far in 2010, they are at about $17 million and counting.
And this is why a) I prefer cameras to police officers** and b) it’s always a good idea to videotape your interactions with authority figures, preferably with something that can immediately upload to the internet.
I trust machines because I can verify them, generally speaking. I don’t trust people.
** I’ve been on the business end of a police officer lying in court, hence I’m a little disillusioned with the whole anti-camera “meet your accuser in court” argument.
There are a multitude of what I consider to be logical and appropriate reasons for ridding myself of indoctrinated notions of ill-defined “patriotism” to the USA federal government and lower order political institutions.
Further details not delved into but suffice to say that I and apparently others are distancing ourselves from old-fashioned notions and that bureaucrats and bureaucracies are increasingly becoming a method of separating the masses from the ruling class (and the bureaucracies from the commoner citizens) as part of an ongoing class war.
So much truth in the adage “Y’all can’t fight city hall.”
Further details not delved into but suffice to say that I and apparently others are distancing ourselves from old-fashioned notions…
You are far from alone.
…and that bureaucrats and bureaucracies are increasingly becoming a method of separating the masses from the ruling class (and the bureaucracies from the commoner citizens) as part of an ongoing class war.
+1.
Here’s a reasonable solution… Force every one of the police officers to pay the harrassed man the full total for every one of the tickets, PLUS his time (normal hourly wage) fighting them. AND ban these corrupt officers from ever issuing a ticket again at any law enforcement job.
Look at the address on the ticket envelope: City of Chicago, Department of Revenue. The url for looking up info: http://www.cityofchicago/revenue.
“It’s not about the money.”
These “officers” are not worthy of the name. They should each (including the dope from IAD) be investigated, tried, and, if guilty, fired, fined and incarcerated. I don’t know what legal remedy there is for dealing with the Mayor’s and City Attorney’s Offices, since they didn’t deal with the problem, but tried to defend the indefensible, they too should be brought-in for a bit of the embarassment.
Actually, I suppose this would have to be handled at the State of Illinois level, by a commission or the IL-AG.
Cops are out of control these days. i have several in my family, and always grew up learning to respect law enforcement. Not any more.
I would say 95% of the time, my interactions with police officers have just been cops beating their chest to show their power.
I absolutely agree that ALL interactions with law enforcement should be videotaped. I remember getting in an incident with an off-duty cop who was moonlighting. I pulled out my camera and began filming him. He got REAL courteous, he didn’t want to lose that pension!
Ah, Chicago’s finest. The first words I heard when I first visited Chicago were “F— off!”, spoken by a Chicago cop when my buddy asked him for directions. Full disclosure, my buddy was bit hung over at the time, but still, it was obvious we weren’t in Kansas anymore.
Pity. Maybe it was never true, but in Detroit we used to say the beauty of Chicago was that it was big-enough to feel like a N.Y.-sized metropolis but still small-enough to offer the courtesies of a mid-western town.
I’m not shocked. Chicago issues tickets for 1″ past the street sign, 1″ of your bumper hanging out of your driveway, 1″ of the front bumper over the sidewalk. So hearing people like this do such things is no shock.
Cops do have it bad. For all the good/great ones out there, it only takes a few to put a stain on every single one of them. But I’ll stand up for CPD. Every single time I’ve interacted with them, including a couple of calls for neighbors screaming at each other, smashing things on the floor, and trespassing at a vacant building, these guys were there within a matter of a couple minutes, and they came in ready to go. They were very professional in the way they handled everything, the questions they asked, etc. I know there are bad ones, but until I see/experience otherwise, Chicago Police has my full support. These guys do an amazing job in my experience. Just not the ones out writing tickets….
I don’t think they use official CPD to write tickets, do they? Isn’t there a separate division for that? Has this changed?
It is a felony to videotape an officer in Illinois.
http://www.videomaker.com/community/videonews/2010/06/7994-videotaping-police-officers-a-felony/
** This was intended to be a reply to psarhjinian
Only until someone with the resources to challenge it gets it to an appeals coulrt. That’s so flagrantly unconstitutional it would be laughable if it hadn’t been enacted with a straight face.
Illinois is a two-party state, meaning both people have to know you are taping. This applies only to audio, by the way. If you are recording video with no audio you are fine even if the other person doesn’t know you are recording.
If the officer sees that you are recording, you are fine.
If you tell the officer that you are recording, you are fine. He doesn’t have to agree, he just has to know.
If the officer is in a public place and acting as a police officer, the result is likely to be the same as in Maryland, but I am not too sure.
The laws about recording are very strict in Illinois because politicians have a long history of attempting to hide from the feds. So yes, the entire idea behind the recording laws is to make sure public officials are not being recorded!
The people of Chicago pretty much have what they want. They actually chose this, and they affirm that choice with each election.
Chicago is hurting bad, financially. Chicago is short by billions funding pensions for public servants. What do you think the cops are going to do?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-pensions-deals-20101116,0,4059864.story
Speaking of which: I moved out of Chicago in July of 09. I went back to the city for a friends Birthday party last saturday, walked down the block to the paybox, and gave them my cc for parking. Pay parking in that area ends at 9pm.
I find a ticket on my car. “NO OR IMPROPERLY PLACED CITY STICKER”, a $120 ticket!!! My car has not been registered in Chicago for over 18 months! This is the _2nd_ “NO CITY STICKER” ticket I’ve received in 3 months (1 from Chicago, 1 from Evanston).
Btw: 2 tickets in Chicago = the boot!