Show Me The Money (and Power)

A couple of anecdotal incidents I've heard about in the past week have caused me pause. They both have to do with people getting into hot water with government authorities over issues that happened so long ago that I would have thought the Statute of Limitations had run out. Both incidents were related to me by relatives of the people involved.

I was first told about a man who was arrested on outstanding warrant charges and was currently in an area city or county (I don't know all of the specifics) jail awaiting extradition to another state on misdemeanor charges from about 12 years earlier. I wasn't given too many details of this situation, but when I mentioned the Statute of Limitations, this man's relative told me that they had inquired about that too, but that for some reason it didn't seem to matter. It seemed odd to me that this man would have been sitting in jail (at that time for nearly 2 weeks) due to a 12-year-old, out of state misdemeanor (not felony) charge. But I kind of filed that information in the back of my mind.

Five days later, I was talking to a friend of mine, and told him about this situation (he doesn't know the family involved, and I didn't use names, anyway). This friend then told me about a situation one of his relatives is currently facing. In this case, I was told more details.

Approximately 17 years ago, a young man had moved to the Chicago area from out of state, trying to start out on his own. One day when he was at work, his car was stolen. Then when he came out of work, he was mugged, and all of his money was stolen. He'd had enough of Chicago, and moved back to his home state. However, before leaving Chicago, he did report his car as stolen.

Fast forward 17 years to earlier this year. This man went to renew his Ohio driver's license, but was told that he couldn't, because of an outstanding unpaid ticket in Illinois. It ends up that this man's stolen car 17 years earlier had been stripped, put up on blocks, and left under an underpass or viaduct, where the car was ticketed by police. But this man never received word of the ticket. Despite the ridiculousness of ticketing a car owner for "abandoning" a car that had been stolen from him (and reported stolen), the jurisdiction in charge (I don't know if it's city, county, or state) still has this case open, and is demanding not only the $40 charge for the ticket, but various other fees that have now been added, bringing the total they are demanding to over $500.

The man in question has a friend or relative who is an attorney, who offered to look into the case on a pro bono basis. This attorney even offered to go to Illinois to represent the man. But when this attorney contacted the prosecutor from Illinois, the prosecutor basically said that the man should just travel to Illinois to plead guilty, being represented by the public defender offered to him. The attorney who made the contact was told that if he appeared to represent this man, the costs would increase and the man would also likely be facing jail time.

In this current economy, it is true that many government entities are facing budget constraints. Some of these entities are stepping up enforcement of minor offenses in order to bring in more revenue to government coffers. Until now, I have thought that this was all about the money. But with the strong-armed tactics I've described--especially in the second scenario--I'm beginning to think that it also has to do with using the full force of the power of government to further intrude into people's lives.

Watch out. 1984 was 25 years ago, but here in 2009, more and more, Big Brother is watching.