California cities charge citizens massive prosecutions fees for minor violations
Fascist California: Two California cities fine citizens for minor offenses, then force them to pay the exorbitant bills of the lawyers who prosecuted them.
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.
There’s more, including the fact that when challenged it appeared that the officials of one of theses cities were actually proud of what they are doing.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Fascist California: Two California cities fine citizens for minor offenses, then force them to pay the exorbitant bills of the lawyers who prosecuted them.
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.
There’s more, including the fact that when challenged it appeared that the officials of one of theses cities were actually proud of what they are doing.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
This is why we don’t currently speak Latin… and the result will be the same.
Coachella has grown almost 200% in the last 20 years. Almost all of it Hispanic laborers. They have almost 20 unregulated trailer parks and they are spending millions on cheap housing for even more.
It looks like the city is trying to force poor home owners off of their ever increasingly valued property for someones else’s private profit.
Push a few poor people off of their acres and you could put up a government subsidized housing project pretty quick.
i wonder if these lawyers are also representing the builders?
Politically they are just doing this to help the poor farm workers and new immigrants.
Hmm… looking at Wikipedia, these two cities are in Riverside County in California. Heavily Republican-voting Riverside County. Coachella has about 41,000 residents, nearly 40,000 of them Hispanic, 28% roughly below the Federal poverty line. Indio has 76.000 residents., about two thirds of them Hispanic, with about 21% of the population under the poverty line.
Contrary to pztchok, I don’t see this as “push[ing] a few poor people off of their acres” (in their unregulated trailer parks?) so builders can put up “government subsidized housing projects.” This is a desert area. Land is cheap. Knocking off this goofball resident and that doesn’t really provide the connected space needed for housing projects.
What it actually looks like is the sort of municipal government mindset that decides city payrolls can’t be funded by routine property taxes, so cities have to be creative and fund more and more of their expenses by hitting people with fines. Sounds like Ferguson, Missouri, doesn’t it? Except for being in California. Can we say HISPANIC LIVES MATTER?
There is nothing wrong with sub contracting out these small cases to private law firms.
As long as the fees are set and the city pays the law firms.
This is the result of not having set fees and allowing the law firms to bill the residents directly. If they billed the city this much a judge would toss them out of court.
The law firm new exactly what it was doing. It would wait to deliver the bill until one day after the window for appeals ran out on the original case. Thus the home owner does not get a free court day and judge. Now the home owner has to hire a lawyer at their own expense and take the law firm to court. And even if they win, the law firm is allowed to re-bill the home owner for the new time in court.
I was in S.Cal. a few years back and the desert is sprouting casinos like weeds after a big rain.
“Two-States of California”
Victor Davis Hanson at American Freedom Alliance
August 2017
https://youtu.be/v1eNcuGcPW4
(37:40)
Stupid and getting more stupider:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/26/france-set-to-make-gender-based-insults-illegal/
“Let’s seal a pact of equality between men and women,” Macron said. “It is essential that shame changes camp. Gender-based insults will be punishable by law. Offenders will face a deterrent fine.”
And when a fine is not enough then we will jail you, and when the fear of jail does not work…………..then………..we will see. Unless of course you are an adherent of Islam.
The Left and its politically correct thinking, whether in the United States or in France really is offensive on so many levels.
Isn’t it interesting that in the late 16th Century William Shakespeare had a 15th Century character, Dick the Butcher, utter those famous lines that still ring true today in the 21st Century?
Seems similar to forcing your family to pay for the bullet used to execute you.
Who can we get on Case…
Ozzy Osbourne
“Perry Mason”
Ozzmosis 1995
https://youtu.be/ZTBPVD8b7zk
4:32
Is there anyone here who would not like to see the Clintons pay for their prosecution rather than the taxpayer?