Oregon Parking Meter Samaritan Acquitted
Everyone can take off their “Free Ben Bonds” T-shirts now…
Eugene, Oregon’s famous parking meter Samaritan just recently had his day in court and was acquitted.
As documented here back in January, Bonds tried to feed nearby parking meters when he saw a city parking enforcement person writing tickets for expired meters.
The two verbally sparred, and depending on who you believe, Bond or the ticket writer, one of the them over reacted. Bond ultimately ended up getting arrested for allegedly obstructing a city employee from doing their job.
In the end, Bond’s charge was thrown out on somewhat of a technicality.
Here’s the full story from KVAL TV, “Judge acquits man in parking meter case.”
It really is a matter of he said/she said, which is unfortunate. If he acted as the PEA said he acted, then he’s guilty, in my opinion. Just because he didn’t use words which implied a threat is really lame.
However, if he didn’t act as the PEA said he acted, and he really did just feed the meters, with minimal interaction with the PEA, then he’s not guilty.
My gut feeling says it’s somewhere in the middle. And what he SHOULD have done is simply walk in front of her by several car lengths and feed the meters quietly with NO interaction with the PEA. And I think she still would have gotten mad.
I also don’t understand what his point was when he talked to her. He said it was a sh**y thing to do: What was a sh**y thing to do, her job? Or writing tickets after he had fed the meters? What does he expect her to do, simply not write tickets? I was just never sure what he was saying on this.
JA!
Very well stated. I think you hit it right on the head.
If you want to help people by feeding meters, nothing is gained by saying anything negative to the PEA.
Recently, all the PEAs I’ve interacted with were very friendly. But, they weren’t issuing me a ticket.
Eugene Oregon can easally put this parking meter hero out of business. How? Just sell the meters to Morgan Stanley! Since you need to put the receipts INSIDE the cars, he can’t do his thing, as you make the ordinance say that you can’t affix the receipt to the windshield wiper or tape it to the car. One consequence of the meter deal is that only the driver can make the car legal with the receipt, not a mayor-hater armed with a roll of quarters.