June 12th – My family is coming into town for a family reunion. I’m expected 20 family members at the house. Of course I am trying to clean the yard, house, etc to get ready for my company. At the last minute, I decided to clean out the front flower bed that was filled with leaves. I grabbed a plastic bag and racked up the leaves, placed them in the bag. My trash can (which is undersized and will hold exactly a weeks worth of trash) was full. I decided to put the bag of leaves in the recycle bin and close the lid. Trash day was tomorrow, so I placed the bins on the curb. This is how it all started.
June 13th – Friday. Trash Day. I go to work as normal. When I come home, the trash can is emptied, but the recycle bin is placed up on my grass. It is still full, and it has a sticker on top stating what is allowed in the recycle bin. This really sucks on several accounts, mainly because I can’t hold two weeks worth of recyclables in the bin. So since they didn’t take it I would have to wait until the following week before they picked it up. I decided to take the bag of leaves out of the bin, since I knew they wouldn’t take the leaves, and keep the recycle bin out on the curb. I called the Fort Worth Environmental department, and informed them that they didn’t pick up my recycle bin. I was informed that they might pick it up that Saturday, but can’t make any promises. They didn’t pick it up. I kept it out on the curb all week in hopes they would pick it up.
Sometime in August – I get a letter in the mail from the City of Fort Worth. It was a ticket. I can’t remember exactly what the ticket stated, but I do remember it stating I had Styrofoam in my recycle bin and I was being charged with a misdemeanor. I was upset, but not totally surprised at the ticket. The thing that I didn’t understand was that it said Styrofoam. I knew about the bag of leaves, but Styrofoam!? First, I didn’t even know you couldn’t place Styrofoam in the bin. I would think that it is recyclable. Second, I didn’t remember placing any Styrofoam in the bin. They must be mistaken. The ticket didn’t have a fee on it. It just had a number to call. I called the number to see what the fine was for. The lady that took the call took my ticket #. Then after looking it up, just said “Wow”. I thought to myself, this isn’t good.
Lady on the phone: “Um…the fine is for $319 dollar.”
Me: Excuse me!?
Lady on the phone: How do you want to take care of this?
Me: I don’t! I’m not guilty!
Lady on the phone: I’ll send this to the court and they will notify you for a trial.
At this point, I’m thinking my case will be that I didn’t place the bag of leaves in there. It’s their word against mine. They can’t actually have the garbage man take time off work to come to court over this matter. If it was like any of the traffic tickets I’ve got dismissed, if the officer doesn’t show up, it’s dismissed. What evidence can they have? I’m golden. 319 bucks! I’m still floored, and irate at this point, but knew my day would come to set the record straight and get this dismissed.
September – I get a letter from the court stating my court date is January 14, 2009. 3:00 PM.
January 14th – The day is finally here. I’d been thinking about how I’m going to handle this for a while. Let me first state that I don’t know much about court rooms. I’ve been there to get my ticket for no insurance thrown out, and I’ve been there for a speeding ticket which I actually had an attorney represent me.
That morning, I got on the FW website and looked for what it stated was actually allowable in the recycle bin and what wasn’t. To my surprise, it doesn’t state what is NOT allowed, but only states what IS allowed. Styrofoam isn’t listed, neither is Grass or Yard Waste. Of course one could assume that since they aren’t listed on the allowable list, that they aren’t allowable. Anyways, I printed this off and took it with me to the court house.
Tangent that has nothing to do with the ticket:
2:40 – I get to downtown Fort Worth. I knew I was going to have to park at a meter, so I brought change. There was a spot I was familiar with that is usually open. There are 4 parallel parking spots that are all metered spots. In the past when I parked there, each of these four spots had a meter. I’m not sure why they did this, but they replaced the 4 meters, with one meter in the middle. The four spots are labeled A, B, C, and D. C is the one I pulled in. It is clearly labeled “Parking Space C – See meter for instructions”. I go over to the meter. The meter has no instructions on how to use this, so I went off common sense. The meter has 4 buttons on it that are all labeled with a letter beside it for its corresponding parking space. I hit C. It brings up 0:12. Common sense told me that the person that was parked in C just left and that there were 12 minutes remaining. I hit C and Hold it down. Nothing happens. I put a quarter in the meter. Nothing happens. I hit C. It still says 0:12. WTF? I hit A. A States 45 minutes. So I hit C again. Now I’m at 0:11. I put another quarter in, and hit C again. Still 0:11. I hit A and it goes to 53 minutes. I ended up repeating this until I was out of change. What other choices did I have? I left the meter with 11 minutes on Parking Spot C (which I was in). I didn’t feel good about this, but didn’t have any other options really besides parking somewhere else. More on this later, but you can probably guess what happens.
2:50 – I get to the court house. Court room #2, which I was supposed to be in was locked. I asked the officer standing outside, if I was in the right place, and he said they usually open the doors right at 3:00. Sure enough right at 3:00 they open up. There ended up being 3 other cases along with mine in this court room. I could write a whole other story about these 3 cases alone. I’ll spare you for now.
The court room includes: me, the other 3 people for their cases, the judge, a clerk, a baliff, and then about 10-12 uniformed unarmed officers in white. I wasn’t really sure at first what they were all doing, but later realized that these officers were there to testify for the cases that day. I didn’t really expect someone to be there to testify against me. My thinking going in was “what, is the garbage man going to testify against me?”
I hand my letter to the clerk, and sit down. After about 10 minutes, the Judge starts. He begins be explained that this is a municipal court. We will first enter our pleas. He explains what our options are.
1- Guilty
2 – Not Guilty
3- No Contest.
He goes on to explain that No Contest and Guilty are the same thing in this court. No Contest was created so that someone could plead no contest and then if they later on got sued by someone they could state that they never pleaded Guilty. But the fine is the same regardless. And since this is municipal court and no one got hurt or can sue, it’s the same thing.
He then goes on to say that if you don’t know what you are being charged with, please ask and I’ll explain. Judge says, “I always thought it was smart to know what you were being charged with before you enter a plea.” I shook my head in agreement
He calls me first. I stand.
Judge – Mr. Brown, do you understand the charges against you?
Me – No, I do not your honor. Can you please explain.
Judge – I didn’t really understand it at first either. This is what it states…
He goes on to describe the charges. I can’t remember exactly what it stated at this point. But I do remember him saying “I willingly placed or allowed Yard Waste and Styrofoam in my recycle bin…”
Me – Not Guilty, Your Honor. I did not place those things in my bin.
Judge – Wait a second. The language you used there is interesting. You said you didn’t place them there. But the charge states you allowed them to be placed there.
Me – Everyone places their garbage out on the curb the same time each week. Once it’s out there, I have no way of telling…
Judge – Stop right there…I don’t want an explanation. I just found it interesting on your language.
Me – I understand, you don’t want to hear facts at this time. Not Guilty, Your Honor.
Judge – Ok.
The judge looks at me and the ticket with an interesting look. He is a cool cat. A black Judge, that doesn’t take crap from anyone, but looks like he will listen to reason. I have a good feeling about him.
The others go through the same thing.
15 minutes passed, and the prosecutor calls me.
Prosecutor: Would you like to talk about this case? You don’t have to, but it might save us some time.
Me: Sure
Prosecutor: Let’s step outside for a minute.
We go outside the court room followed by one of the white shirted officers.
Prosecutor: This is office Cagle
Me: How do you do?
We shake hands. He seems polite. The Prosecutor on the other hand does not. He seems like he is in a hurry, not excited to be there at all, and irritated at me for pleading not guilty. I mean come on…his job is to prosecute people that have various fines for the city of Fort Worth. His life is pretty low as it is. Why take it out on me? Well I guess that’s his job. But it’s a sucky one if you ask me.
Prosecutor shows me some photos of my trash cans. F! I didn’t ever think they would have photos. What where they, I thought. I didn’t get a great look at them at that time. I should of asked to see them closer.
Prosecutor: We have pictures of your garbage with yard waste and Styrofoam in it. Can you please explain what happened.
Me: Well, I didn’t place any Styrofoam in the container. I’m not sure about that. As for the yard waste, I got home on that Friday, and my recycle bin was not emptied. It was up on my grass with a sticker on it. There was a bag of leaves inside. I removed the bag of leaves and put the bin back on the curb.
Prosecutor: You thought it was ok, to place the container back on the street with items that weren’t allowed? You just thought, “I don’t care, I’m going to leave this here”?
Me: As I stated, I removed the bag of leaves. I didn’t see anything else in there but cardboard and other recyclables.
Officer Gagle: Cardboard is legal.
Me: I know.
Prosecutor: Look, I just want to know if you still think you aren’t guilty and want to go to trial on this matter.
Even though I didn’t get a good look at pictures, I didn’t see the bag of leaves in any of the glances I got. I thought to myself that this picture was taken after I removed them, and they have nothing on me.
*Thinking for a second* I said “Yes, I’m still not guilty. “
We start walking back in. I really didn’t want to go to trial, but I didn’t want to pay the 320 dollar fine either. I stopped them before we went back in.
Me: What are my other options here besides paying the fine?
Prosecutor: Look, I don’t want to go to trial on this matter, just as I’m sure you don’t either. I can offer to reduce the fine and have you pay 200 bucks.
Me: 200? No. Not Guilty. Let’s do the trial.
To be continued…
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