A couple of cities in the California desert have found a novel and remarkably cruel way to make money—force citizens to pay for the privilege of being prosecuted by the attorneys contracting with these cities.
We've seen cities across the country abuse their own citizens—particularly its poorest residents and visitors—with vicious enforcement of petty laws designed to create a revenue stream via a cascade of fines and fees.
But I don't think we've seen an enforcement mechanism as nasty and cruel as the one the Desert Sun has uncovered out in California's Inland Empire. The cities of Indio and Coachella partnered up with a private law firm, Silver & Wright, to prosecute citizens in criminal court for violations of city ordinances that call for nothing more than small fines—things like having a mess in your yard or selling food without a business license.
Those cited for these violations fix the problems and pay the fines, a typical code enforcement story. The kicker comes a few weeks or months later when citizens get a bill in the mail for thousands of dollars from the law firm that prosecuted them. They are forcing citizens to pay for the private lawyers used to take them to court in the first place. So a fine for a couple of hundred dollars suddenly becomes a bill for $3,000 or $20,000 or even more.
In Coachella, a man was fined $900 for expanding his living room without getting a permit. He paid his fine. Then more than a year later he got a bill in the mail from Silver & Wright for $26,000. They told him that he had to pay the cost of prosecuting him, and if he didn't, they could put a lien on his house and the city could sell it against his will. When he appealed the bill they charged him even more for the cost of defending against the appeal. The bill went from $26,000 to $31,000.
TFRP = Tar, Feathes, Rope, Pole
Writing as a retired member of the Orange County District Attorney's Office, I will tell you that cities in OC almost exclusively (Anaheim is an exception) use contract city attorneys to handle municipal matters, code enforcement, etc. It's not surprising that the contract lawyers made this arrangement. It's shameful and an abuse of power. The shameless (scum sucking) attorneys who arranged this deal need to be dragged behind a horse through the desert for a mile or two - or TFRP.
ReplyDeleteThe "public servants" who agreed to this scam are as much to blame as the attorneys. Both should be exiled from respectable society, kind of like a banishment, and forbidden from living among the people they've abused.
DeleteSend them to North Korea so that they can gather parasitic worms as the comrades work them to death. Let them eat tree bark.
DeleteCHI COMS charge you for the bullet that kill you.
ReplyDeleteLooks like we aren't too far away from that now.
DeleteNo, thankfully, still, we get to shoot them for fun and profit. I'm thinking of starting a website which raises money, from donations, to pay to shoot lawyers. I think it will be an instant hit. Hold on, Paypal is calling.
ReplyDeleteFollow the money, bet there are some kickbacks to the civil servants (neither civil, nor servants) in the form of cash or presents or hiring of relatives. A good investigator could crush them.
ReplyDelete