Advertisement
You are here: Sun HomeCollectionsFoster

Plea Deal Heads Off Great Debate Over Selling Forged Parking Pass

CRIME BEAT

April 22, 2009|By PETER HERMANN

"... including a building, ground, public conveyance, vessel or bridge and is intended to or designed to be inserted into a box or machine for the collection of fees or given to a collector."

To White, named a "super lawyer" in Baltimore Magazine, prosecutors "picked a statute that doesn't fit." A parking pass cannot under this language be considered a token, nor is anything inserted in a box, and there's never anyone around to collect the proceeds.

But Polk, the prosecutor, told me that her reading of the law is that a token is a ticket, and a parking pass "is a ticket as defined in the statute." The streets covered by the permit can be considered the "ground" or "public conveyance," and the Parking Authority would be the "collector."

Advertisement

Too bad the lawyers robbed Judge Chiapparelli of a chance to rule on this pressing matter. Common sense tells us you shouldn't forge parking permits and sell them on the Internet and that doing so should be illegal.

It would be nice if the law actually said that.

Baltimore Sun Articles
|