Six members of Free Keene have been wandering the city with pockets full of change, looking for expired parking meters to feed. When they find one they drop in some coins and leave a calling card.
Members of the group place cards under windshield wipers that read, “Your meter expired; however, we saved you from the king’s tariffs, Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Please consider paying it forward,” and includes an address where donations can be sent.
But the city claims that the video-camera wielding do-gooders are taunting and intimidating the cities parking enforcement staff so they have filed a lawsuit against the merry band of meter feeders.
“Besides following me, crowding around me, making video recordings of my activities, and placing coins in expired meters to prevent me from writing tickets, these individuals repeatedly taunt and harass me, asking why I am stealing peoples’ money and telling me to get another job … In particular, Graham Colson likes to taunt me by saying, ‘Linda, guess what you’re not going to do today – write tickets.’ … The taunting and harassment tends to get worse when there is a group, as they try to one-up each other at my expense.”
…
“In addition, I have begun to suffer physical effects due to the stress, including coming home from work with a red face, feeling heart palpitations, and having dreams related to this activity.”
The Robin Hooders claim to have denied the city some 4000 tickets.
The suit takes no issue with the video recording, according to the report, but would require the six individuals named to maintain a distance of at least 50 feet from the parking enforcement officers during the course of their duties for the city.
I’ve seen more than a few folks trying to stop a ‘parking enforcement officer’ from slapping them with a citation. It’s not exactly a pretty sight. So I can’t imagine that engaging the people ranging around town making sure people’s meters are not expired could be all that much worse. I guess they don’t make parking enforcement officers like they used to?
I’m actually more interested in the motivation of the Robin Hooders. Maybe they don’t think you should have to pay for parking at all? Perhaps it is just a very clever fund raising strategy?
But isn’t Free Keene fostering a parking meter entitlement mentality? How do you instill personal responsibility by feeding people’s expired meters for them? And wont the city just look for other places to collect any lost revenue, if that is even part of the meter filling mission?
Just questions. Personally, I think this is hilarious. I hope it works for them. And good luck with the lawsuit. May the people of Keene show their appreciation, though given its left leaning character they’ll probably just get pissed off when they finally stop doing it and wonder what happened to their free ride. Um, Free parking.