Posted on 07/03/2019 2:22:58 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
It all started innocently enough. Last summer, Jim Ficken left his modest home in Dunedin, Florida, for Columbia, South Carolina, to tend to his late mother’s estate. He asked a friend and local handyman to keep an eye on his lawn, lest it grow too long in his absence. After Jim left, sadly, his friend died unexpectedly. And, left unattended, Jim’s grass did what grass in Florida does during the summer: It grew.
The city’s code enforcement department noticed. Labeling Jim a “repeat violator” because he’d once let his grass grow too long some four years earlier, the city began fining Jim immediately, and without warning, for allowing his grass to grow more than ten inches high. The fine for this seemingly innocuous transgression? Five hundred dollars per day. That’s the same amount as the fine for barreling through a school zone at 50 mph.
The fines kept accruing the entire time Jim was away—totaling about $7,000 by the time he returned home. But because the city issued no notice, Jim still had no idea he was being fined. And, like his grass, the fines continued growing.
(Excerpt) Read more at ij.org ...
Jim’s case is IJ’s latest such effort and builds directly on our recent U.S. Supreme Court victory in Timbs v. Indiana. In Timbs, the Court explicitly applied the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause to state and local governments. Using this new legal ammunition, IJ and Jim have teamed up to protect the property rights of all Floridians and to send a clear message to other cities that abusive code enforcement is not only wrong—it’s unconstitutional.
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In addition to the “Excessive Fines Clause” there are also likely Due Process issues since the city didn’t issue him written (or any?) notice.
Hope he wins.
Code enforcement IS illegal, is does not comply with the 5th amendment
Code enforcement is theft of your property and turning you into a slave in the process.
If you want to live in a community or development with “code enforcement” move to an HOA where you agree to the rules BEFORE you buy the house or whatever and you get a copy of the rules when you purchase, don’t like the rules, don’t buy in the community.
Towns were not suppose to have code enforcement, it fact, I can argue that it is illegal under the 5th amendment due to the fact that the property rights are being taken, and the home/land owner is becoming a slave to the state/local government. Its a rights issue.
I never received a 2,500 page code enforcement rule book when I bought my house, nor did I sign a piece of paper stating I agree with them at closing. BTW, they can change at any time and be selectively enforced.
MUI it is based on the 10A. The States can manage their jurisdiction any way they want, including deference to cities and counties.
Just MU — YMMV.
[[Labeling Jim a “repeat violator” because he’d once let his grass grow too long some four years earlier,]]
But ILLEGAL INVADERS can come here- break all kinds of SERIOUS laws, and the left protect them- but by golly, let grass grow a bit tall, and all heel breaks loose-
Get your priorities straight!
This illustrates the insatiable and immoral thirst for revenue and power that ALL government has.
All the buttinski fascists are not in Washington, DC. Got plenty of them in everyone’s home town.
Polk County Florida (it may be the City of Lakeland, I’m not positive, but trust me, it’s the same difference) hired workers to drive around and note any property that has any appearance of additions or alterations. Fences, extra rooms, out buildings, etc - anything that would have originally required a building permit.
These people then go back and research as to when these changes were made and see if they match up to a building permit being issued at some point in time. They apparently go back as far as records permit. When they find something that was done without a permit (even decades ago) the government then fines the property owner.
I can’t say if this is still going on as we escaped Flori-Duh in 2006. We could no longer take the 9 month summers.
This is an example of where the elected pro-2nd amendment, constitutional sheriff steps in and tells the fascist bureaucrats and town council that his detectives are about to start an investigation of embezzlement by bureaucrats and elected town officials.
The fine will vanish instantly.
Oh I see
So if the local town or state wants to institute slavery they can
If they want to ban all guns, no problem
Ban all abortions
Require all journalists to get town/state approval for all columns, articles, any that are critical of the dear leaders no problem at all
Require white only/black only drinking fountains, bathrooms, diners, schools etc no issue at all
Just as long as the federal government doesn’t do it
Nothing can be less American than speed and red light cameras.
Suddenly people without a ticket or an accident in 20 years are breaking the law left and right, according to the fines they get in the mail.
I’m always amazed that a few government workers can terrorize an entire population without running into someone like me. Am I that unusual?
Not just anti-American it's anti-French too!
“Emmanuel Macron’s interior minister has revealed that Yellow Vest protesters have destroyed 60 per cent of France’s speed cameras.”
“Nearly 60 per cent of the radars today have been neutralised, attacked, destroyed” by the anti-globalist movement Christophe Castaner railed, disparaging the anti-globalist movement as “imbeciles”.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/01/10/macron-govt-yellow-vests-destroyed-60-percent-french-speed-cameras/
I wasn’t sure about the yellow vests until now.
Now I LOVE them.
I want to get out of my car and shoot at the cameras and then take a bat to them!!!!
But jail and prison don’t agree with me and give me an upset stomach...
It actually WAS that way until the 14th Amendment was ratified.
I believe that THE one place where they can be useful is in highway construction zones. People blaze through those areas without a care in the world for the workers OR their fellow drivers
If you want to know what a construction zone is like for the workers, imagine your work desk sitting a few feet away from speeding cars, pickups, SUVs and big rigs, separated from them by only a white line (maybe) and a jersey barrier or some orange cones.
I agree BUT I never know what to do when it’s 3am and I’m coming home from Atlantic City on the Garden State Parkway doing 85 or so and then a sign says
“Construction: 40 mph. Fines doubled”
It’s 3am and NO ONE is working!!!!
Does it still apply!! :)
Varies by state. 24/7 in mine.
hyperbole does not serve your argument.
I was providong you the theoretical basis fir municipal authority.
It is lije infractions. Provably unconstitutional but emeded in our legal framework anyway.
We just outlawed red light cameras in Texas (whole state),
We have our moments.
Here in dear Maryland, they use speed cameras mounted on vans in construction zones. It's the stationery ones mounted permanently on poles that people have a genuine problem with. Sometimes it is a stretch of road that is long and straight and/or with no buildings on either side, but they set the speed limit at 35 or 40 and rake in the dough. UK had a spate of speed cameras vandalized after they purposely lowered the speed limits on familiar roads as soon as the cameras were installed, without warning.
Professor Adam McLeod of Faulkner University Law School (Alabama) wrote a detailed article on the unconstitutionality of photo-enforcement programs:
That Time I Turned a Routine Traffic Ticket into the Constitutional Trial of the Century
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