Shit like this really makes me

www.nbc5i.com/family/2734756/detail.htm

90-Year-Old Woman Fears She'll Be Arrested
City Inspectors Ticket Woman With $290 Fine Amid New Trash Rules

POSTED: 7:31 AM CST December 31, 2003
UPDATED: 10:36 AM CST December 31, 2003

DALLAS -- A Dallas family is talking trash amid a new crackdown on garbage. A family says the city fined its 90-year-old mother almost $300 when the yard man left bulk trash at the curb a day early.

A quiet Lakewood neighborhood is hardly a hotbed of crime, and Vicey Clifton doesn't fit any criminal profile. For the last month, however, she's been telling her family that she fears police are going to handcuff her and take her to jail.

City inspectors took a digital picture the day they wrote a ticket carrying a $290 fine for, according to family members, taking her trash out a day early.

"She's 90 years old and she does get confused when she looks at the calendar," Clifton's daughter, Barbara Trautman, said.

Her daughters say they called at least 10 people with the city to try and explain.

"They don't care how old she is. They don't care that she's never had any kind of citation of any kind," Trautman said.

"It's not meant to be the city going after people, but people in partnership with the city to make their neighborhoods as clean as we can make them," City of Dallas spokesman Sam Lopez said.

That apparently doesn't include alleys like the one behind Clifton's home, where NBC 5 found trash and tree limbs scattered everywhere.

"There's got to be a better way to do this," Trautman said.

The city says the new trash rules that changed in August is the better way. Before then, citations came by registered mail, and trash could sit by the curb for more than a month.

That was not the situation in this case, and Clifton's family says inspectors should look at the circumstances before issuing any citation.

She's lucky they didnt burn her house down and shoot her dogs while looking for the bomb making lab in her basement. +1 for local government for keeping this wild woman in check!

[b]anarchy in the streets!!!![/b]

they do this shit in FRANCE too.

Just tax collectors doing their job.

Maybe she should have voted? Oh yeah, she cant read the calender. I hope someone has locked up all the knives and disconnected the gas to the stove. Cause if granny is too inferm to know the date, she might be better off in a nursing home.

Remember, the towns people elected the leaders who proposed this city ord. It was debated in city counsel meetings, open to public comment, and apparently the majority of the towns people supported it.

She can vote with her feet and move out of that city. She can elect new city counsil leaders. she can run for city counsiel herself. But she cant put her trash out early and claim the little old lady defense.

...in the great state of TEXAS...

Mike

AR15fan, I don't know what to say without breaking the CoC. You want to run a woman out of town on a rail because she didn't know what day it was? Shee-ite. I'm 33, and I'm not sure what day it is without checking the calendar first.

No, I want her to be responsible for her actions.  It's clueless people like her that elect the leaders that pass these types of laws.

Reminds me of that crazy bitch who was arrested and people took her side before knowing of the circumstances.  Maybe her stuff was piled into the street, who knows.  I'd like to think that a municipality wouldn't fine a 90 year old $300 for something as trivial as trash a day early.

Right. If elections could change anything, they'd be illegal.

Show me that she voted in the last election, for the opponent of her sitting council member. Show me that she spoke out against this law in city counsel meetings. Show me that she encouraged her neighbors to do the same.  Then I will buy off on her role as victim.

AR15fan,

I there ANY government action you cant justify?

I'd like to know that answer on that as well.

Hey its our own fault i mean we voted these people in office blah blah blah... Yeah right.

In TEXAS?

[shock]

WTF?

There is a problem I see with this.
I can easily see this trash law being one or two sentances or paragraphs in a law that pertained to the overall operations of whatever agency picks up the garbage.  Or an ordinance aimed at cleaning up the trailer park/slum.
And this little old lady got caught in a technical violation that nobody saw coming, because nobody had the little old lady in mind when they wrote the law.  They couldn't very well write it to exclude a situation like hers, if they didn't have it in mind.  
Furthermore, the ordinance very well could have had the support of most of the community, because the reasoning of the law was to clean up the huge messes, or keep them from accumulating.  Again, the authors didn't have the little old lady in mind.
Just like a whole bunch of other examples (assault weapons ban that banned Olympic .22 target pistols in CA, etc).  I hope Dallas amends the law and makes it right.

I don't remember voting for AR15fan...

My 90-year-old grandmother would have to check the calendar every 15 minutes to remember what day it was.

I voted, and I think she should go take a dump on city hall's front steps and wipe her ass with three one-hundred-dollar bills before she sticks them in the envelope.

Hut! Hut! Sir! Yes, Sir!

At the end of the day, too many LEOs think this way and it bodes ill for all.

Hey Mr. AR15fan:

At least Mr. Lopez got to go home safely that night and beat his wife and mother.

Ahhhh..yes Dallas, fortunately most of us in Texas do not consider Dallas a part of our state.  It ranks right up there with austin (our version of kalifornia) and the "well run" city of Houston (out-of-town brownville) is not far behind either.  One must remember, several of the cities in the DFW-Metroplex are trying to "out-do" each other with political correctness and local ordinances, etc. (PS--they took lessons from austin.)
 

Yep!!

And, some of us are gonna give the fucker a BAD case of indigestion one of these days too...[pissed]

Bureaucrats!!.....there's your problem.

Let's stack the Bureaucrats and clerks and "inspectors" like cordwood and burn them!

In case any of you are missing the point ,
The whole country has started this trend of gathering more money from us by petty infractions and outrageous fines for petty offences.
This story just goes to show you that no state is immune from the petty dictators we elect, you would expect to see this shit in NYC or jersey.

Do you remember the kid in grade school who was made hall monitor, most of them turned in to little nazis right away when given that small amount of power, these personality types can not handle authority or power.

It's the FRENCH thing to do...

Remember....gov't property is YOUR property...LOL!