So I had to go out to the store... and it's a very cold day and my 13 year old car does not like to run cold. So I do as usual and go out and start up the
car to warm it up for about 10 minutes before driving it.
I park on the street in front of my house, legal to park there, never had a problem from the police ever before. I come back out after 10 minutes and there's a police cruiser in the street right next to car (blocking any traffic that might have come along) and the officer is standing by the windshield on the driver's side with her ticket book out. I stopped dead on the steps... floored... I couldn't think why I'd be getting a ticket, my plates are current, I wasn't parked too close or too far from the curb or anything... not blocking traffic in any way, no warrants out for me... plates are properly displayed, there's no signs preventing on street parking on our street... ect... ect... and as I said, I parked the same way I have parked for the past year and a half.
The officer asks me if it was my car, I said yes, of course it is. She said to me there's a city ordinance against leaving your car running unattended.
I must have looked at her as if she had told me that the sky was green, I said I was warming it up because it's cold and I don't like driving an older car cold, she went on further and said 'That's how cars get stolen, in fact, just as I pulled up a stolen car call on the Boulevard had just come over the radio.' (My thoughts were 'where on earth is 'the Boulevard'? because the only one I can think of is the Paseo and we aren't even close to there...)
But I didn't argue... I was not about to make a cop mad. I have a rule against that.
As she drives off and pulls over to the other side of the street about 10 feet away, I get in the car and look at the ticket (she had the name of the street wrong... yeesh, I had to turn off the car, I wasn't about to leave the car running unattended again, and have to point it out to her as she had pulled across the street) thinking to myself this is the most insane thing I've ever gotten a ticket for.
I'm fairly certain that the ordinance is intended for people doing something like double parking downtown and running into a store or office while leaving the car running or something of the such. But having your car running outside your home? Our neighborhood isn't exactly residential, nor business, one side of the street is houses the other is businesses, but it is a side street and doesn't get much traffic or anything. We frequently get police cruisers coming down our street as they just kind of cruise through as they do patrol up a couple blocks and under the bridge up the block. But all my neighbors do the exact same thing... go out and start the car to warm up and go back inside the house... and I have seen police go by previously when my next door neighbor AND I have our cars running unattended...
So... that's my oddest ticket story. It just doesn't seem like anything that I really needed to be cited for. Sure it was breaking the law...I admit to that, and my ignorance that there IS an ordinance against it doesn't make it any less illegal... but it just seems like she wanted to stir up trouble for no real reason. It's not like I was hurting anyone or disrupting anything by warming up my car in front of my house....
Anyone else have a good one?
I park on the street in front of my house, legal to park there, never had a problem from the police ever before. I come back out after 10 minutes and there's a police cruiser in the street right next to car (blocking any traffic that might have come along) and the officer is standing by the windshield on the driver's side with her ticket book out. I stopped dead on the steps... floored... I couldn't think why I'd be getting a ticket, my plates are current, I wasn't parked too close or too far from the curb or anything... not blocking traffic in any way, no warrants out for me... plates are properly displayed, there's no signs preventing on street parking on our street... ect... ect... and as I said, I parked the same way I have parked for the past year and a half.
The officer asks me if it was my car, I said yes, of course it is. She said to me there's a city ordinance against leaving your car running unattended.
I must have looked at her as if she had told me that the sky was green, I said I was warming it up because it's cold and I don't like driving an older car cold, she went on further and said 'That's how cars get stolen, in fact, just as I pulled up a stolen car call on the Boulevard had just come over the radio.' (My thoughts were 'where on earth is 'the Boulevard'? because the only one I can think of is the Paseo and we aren't even close to there...)
But I didn't argue... I was not about to make a cop mad. I have a rule against that.
As she drives off and pulls over to the other side of the street about 10 feet away, I get in the car and look at the ticket (she had the name of the street wrong... yeesh, I had to turn off the car, I wasn't about to leave the car running unattended again, and have to point it out to her as she had pulled across the street) thinking to myself this is the most insane thing I've ever gotten a ticket for.
I'm fairly certain that the ordinance is intended for people doing something like double parking downtown and running into a store or office while leaving the car running or something of the such. But having your car running outside your home? Our neighborhood isn't exactly residential, nor business, one side of the street is houses the other is businesses, but it is a side street and doesn't get much traffic or anything. We frequently get police cruisers coming down our street as they just kind of cruise through as they do patrol up a couple blocks and under the bridge up the block. But all my neighbors do the exact same thing... go out and start the car to warm up and go back inside the house... and I have seen police go by previously when my next door neighbor AND I have our cars running unattended...
So... that's my oddest ticket story. It just doesn't seem like anything that I really needed to be cited for. Sure it was breaking the law...I admit to that, and my ignorance that there IS an ordinance against it doesn't make it any less illegal... but it just seems like she wanted to stir up trouble for no real reason. It's not like I was hurting anyone or disrupting anything by warming up my car in front of my house....
Anyone else have a good one?
Though I have tried up to pick up cute cops... back in the day... but not by getting them
to pull me over...
