At that time, a white city "Code Compliance" car came by and drove VERY slow past the house and checked us out thoroughly. I live in a historic district, so I thought, well, that's what he's checking, but I know I'm in compliance, so no biggie. About thirty minutes later, the car returns and parks, and this squirrely little mole of a man comes up the steps and asks for the owner of the house, and demands to see my license. I ask him what the problem is, and he informs me that my signs are violating some city code.

I say, oh, okay, we'll take them down (although I live in a neighborhood that LOVES garage sales and puts up signs constantly, and never knew this was an issue). He takes my drivers license and issues me a TICKET. I don't normally do this, but I'm practically begging him to just give me a warning or something, he refuses and tells me that it's $200 a sign, and I am lucky he's only writing me up for ONE of them or it could be $1000 total. I'm furious. He continues to prattle on and tells me that (1) they just started enforcing this week, and (2) they're only enforcing down in Oak Cliff, my neighborhood.

We take all our assorted merchandise, load it into the trailer, and haul it to Salvation Army since what's the point of a sale if no one knows about it? I then promptly LOST my damn citation. But in the meantime we did some research, and found that there are some issues on things like signs and the like, but that the city code clearly states that homeowners should be given reasonable notice and time to comply with regulations. I also find that there are much cheaper alternatives to garage sale signs:

1. a derelict car on rims, in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, with a garage sale sign in its back window pointing towards my house would only be $75
2. a prostitute holding up a sign, while selling her wares, might only be cited $175.
3. speeding through a school zone at 20 over the speed limit holding your garage sale sign would only be $50 more, a bargain at $250.
4. finding the code compliance guy in a bar and breaking his nose could possibly cost me as little as $250.

I also note, on the following weekend, 17 garage sale signs in a five-block stretch of the road on which I put my sign, which stay unmolested all weekend long. Apparently they only enforced it on that specific weekend. I took copious photos of these signs, and added to it a snapshot of a lovely sign saying "Honk if you think Gore is an idiot!" that some citizen put on city property in North Dallas which has stayed THERE unmolested and (presumably) uncited for two months.

You always have 21 days after a citation to appear or do whatever, so I showed up on the Monday three weeks after my citation to plead not guilty and get a court date so I could throw a fit with the judge. I stand in line for two hours right after work for this privilege, at the city jail, where you are in line right next to where they release folks with their possessions from said city jail. Oh, but surprise... my 21st day was on 8/12/2000, Saturday. I knew that, but I assumed that you did this during normal business hours so the due date was Monday. Nope... I was wrong. Unlike any other city agency, they're actually open 24 hours a day. So I actually had a warrant out for my arrest.

She tells me though that they haven't actually finished writing it out so I'm safe on the lam so to speak for at least a week until the warrant gets out of the typing pool, and I would have to present a cash bond for the fine amount of $360.00. She keeps speaking in cash bonds terms, and I keep saying, you know, I don't do this every week, I have NO idea what a cash bond is, can you explain what you mean by this? I finally get so upset that I leave the window, and come home and discuss what to do with my girlfriend. We call some bail bondsmen to get insight into this, and doh, "cash bond" just means you pay the money. But I'm still so frazzled that I think, oh, they have those credit card stickers in the court window, I can just pay with a credit card.

We go back down there, at 8:30pm, stand in line for an hour and a half with even nastier stinky people. The janitor comes by and cleans the bathroom and sprays some industrial disinfectant to which I discover I am severely allergic, and I begin machine-gun sneezing for fifteen minutes, which entertains everyone immensely. One of the recent releasees keeps walking by our line and swatting at our arms and our bags. I get to the window to pay, and she says, doh, it's a CASH bond, you have to have cold hard cash.

We have to leave the line again, and we go across the street where we find a liquor store with an ATM. Dawn and I each withdraw $200 cash from our accounts, watching each other's back so that the winos and bums and riff-raff don't mug us or anything. We leave, she drops me off this time because the clerk told me I didn't have to stand in line again. I go to her window, getting ALL sorts of commentary from the folks in line who think I am some privileged white bitch (or at least that's the phrase I overheard!) that has just broken in front of them. I wait for the guy at the window currently to wrap it up. From what I overhear, he's paying on a misdemeanor drug possession charge, and it's $250. Oh, I'm glad they are keeping the streets safe from those vicious garage sale folks.

When it's my turn at the desk, the clerk now on duty says "this is for WHAT?" and can't believe me when I say it's a garage sale sign, says she's never seen one of these before (and she's the supervisor and worked the window for about two decades). I pay my $360 cash, and a court date was set for November 20th, 2000 for a court setting to see if I get a jury trial or whatever.

We leave the lovely Lew Sterrett Justice Center and head home, and Dawn suddenly realizes she doesn't have her bank card. We careen on two wheels to the aforementioned lovely liquor store, to find her card still in the machine, still prompting "press a key for your next transaction" (which means that anyone could have just walked up there and withdrawn money, and she had deposited her paycheck THAT DAY). We call her bank, and unbelievably in the hour that the card was sitting there, active, no one else noticed it. Whew.

November 20, 2000 Court Appearance

I had my first court appearance in the matter of my heinous garage sale signs, where I sat in a court room and waited for my name to be called, and was treated to the lovely knowledge that the other 15 people in the room were all being called up to get a court date for their charges of "physical assault", some with a deadly weapon. Isn't that great. Imagine how the crowd hushed, and the people parted, when they heard my charges, POSTING A GARAGE SALE SIGN!

One upsetting thing at this juncture was that one of the guys whose name was called and approached the bailiff apparently had never BEEN in court before. The bailiff kept asking him how he pled, and the guy didn't understand what to do, so the bailiff said "okay, you're pleading guilty then!". Fortunately, one of the city attorneys overheard and stopped him and said to the guy, "do you feel you did this thing? are you saying you didn't do it?" and the guy said "Nah, I didn't do it!" and so they changed his plea. I get really upset when our legal and judicial system is not freely available to all. I do not believe that you have to have a college degree or even be semi-literate to still partake in our justice system. When there are voting referendums on a subject, I think they should be written in a form that someone with a 5th grade reading comprehension could understand. I hate the elitism of our system -- although I feel strongly that everyone SHOULD be reading at much higher than 5th grade or whatever, the fact is not everyone is, not everyone is college material, but they still are citizens and should have the same access. Rant off.

January 10, 2001 - The Court Date

Dawn took off work with me, and we traipsed down to the court house to have our day. I actually hired an attorney (one of the $45 get your ticket tossed out kind), and was told by his office to appear in court, when called to say my name and that I was represented by JP, and that JP would appear to speak to me after that.

We get to the court room at 8:30 for the 9:00 docket, and we wait. We wait. We wait. It's after 10:00 before one of the busy folks at the front decides to tell us all that the judge for this court is out sick, so what they're doing is pulling judges from other courts during recesses to hear stuff in this court.

We find that three women near us have all been given citations for garage sale signs too.

Our weasel code inspector wanders in. Perhaps stupidly, I say that out loud as he slithers in and takes a seat behind me, sits there squirming for a few minutes when he realizes he's sitting behind his victim (and has probably just heard his name "weasel" spoken aloud), and finally slithers off to the court "witness" area. Darn it, we think, no dismissal for us, he's here.

They finally call my name, not for the docket but just to "see who's here" (which is strange) and when I say my name the city attorney immediately recognizes it and says "oh, yeah, you're represented by JP, he already spoke to me about this." I find this very weird.

Backtrack a bit. Dawn had done a whole boatload of legal research on this, and we sent JP a packet with information. The code inspector (Ben Lee, a.k.a. The Weasel) told us when he was writing us up that we were getting a ticket for having a garage sale sign off our property, which is apparently against the law. We offered to remove the signs, and he said no, he'd already taken them up and was keeping them (refused to give them to us actually), and that giving a warning was not an option, he had been instructed to give citations and not warnings, he had been instructed to start enforcing this two weeks ago and only in Oak Cliff, etc.

However, when he wrote up the citation, he wrote the code we violated, which Dawn's research showed actually was for affixing a sign without a permit to a city structure. Our signs were on little wire stakes on the side of the road, just like every politician and realtor puts out signs. We checked, and although that's city PROPERTY, it's not a city structure, so we weren't in violation of that. AND the code about garage sale signs off premises clearly states that the homeowner is to be given a reasonable amount of time to comply.

The three other women with this citation had done no research, so we filled them in on all of this information as well while we waited.

The judge sneaks in occasionally to move things along. One of the women's docket was called, she approached, and we overheard the city attorney telling her that they were going to reschedule since her inspector had to attend a class. She said okay. She came back to get her things, and Dawn and I as well as another guy there for a hearing who was across the room came over and said "hey -- they're pulling your chain. If the inspector isn't here, you get the case dismissed. Don't agree to that!" She goes back up, the city attorney seems a bit miffed, the judge (who seems pretty nice) supports the woman and her case is dismissed. Whoo hooo!!!!

Finally, I see the judge looking at a packet of paper suspiciously similar to what we provided to my attorney. He's shaking his head back and forth, and makes a little crack about garage sales all the time in his neighborhood, but you can tell he thinks this is a bunch of b.s., seriously. He looks at them, the city attorney comes up and talks to him, and finally they call me for my appearance. I approach the bench, and the judge hands me a dismissal for insufficient evidence. Second Whoo hooooo!!!

We think what happened is that the judge reviewed our materials, and they dismissed because they knew we were right, that we'd been written up improperly and they wouldn't be able to stick it anyway. I was not sure whether we had the option to say "no, we want to have the case heard!" so that I could recoup expenses and the lawyer's fees, but there was a $360 cash bond waiting in the wings that I really wanted back so we just took the dismissal and left.

Your Comments

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