By Tom Jackman April 7
Bruce H. Redwine, longtime owner
of Chantilly Service Center, whose customers’ cars were frequently ticketed
while awaiting state inspection. Virginia has now enacted a law to prohibit
police from issuing such tickets. (Tom Jackman/The Washington Post)
The story of Bruce Redwine and
the Chantilly Service Center made people mad. For years, he and other auto shop
owners watched with outrage as a Fairfax County parking enforcement officer
ticketed cars that were awaiting state inspection or repair. One shop owner
estimated his customers had been hit with $60,000 worth of fines and fees for
expired inspection stickers or tags over six years. Redwine got so angry he
snatched one ticket out of the parking officer’s hand, only to be charged with
felony assault on a police officer.
State Del. James M. LeMunyon
(R-Fairfax) investigated the situation after reading about it in The Washington
Post in October. He introduced a bill in December to prohibit ticketing cars
awaiting state inspection, and it passed both chambers of the Virginia General
Assembly unanimously. On Wednesday, Gov.
Terry McAuliffe signed the bill into law, his spokesman said.
“Cool,” said Redwine, working as
usual in his shop in the Mariah Business Center off Route 28 Wednesday
afternoon. “Absolutely it’s a good thing. But most people waiting for
inspections weren’t a target. Here, people were targeted by the condo
association, which was using the Fairfax parking police as their agent. It’s
not so much the police were targeting as the [condominium management],” he
said, using a more colorful adjective for the association which oversees the
industrial park on Sullyfield Circle.
[Fairfax car repair shops say
parking enforcement targets their customers]
There was not much dispute that
cars with expired tags or registration were being ticketed in Mariah, largely
because Mariah’s property management firm had provided Fairfax police with a letter
in 2009 specifically granting police permission to enforce county traffic,
parking and towing ordinances on the private property. The auto shop operators
all rent from owners of individual units in the industrial park, and their
owners claimed to be powerless to revoke or change the police letter because
they weren’t on the condo board of directors. J.R. Motz, the park’s property
manager for Commercial Condominium Management, declined to answer questions
about the letter or the condo board.
Fairfax County police parking enforcement
Officer Jacquelyn D. Hogue. Her aggressive enforcement of parking laws led to
an uproar and a new state law prohibiting ticketing of vehicles awaiting state
inspection. (Fairfax County Police Department)
One parking enforcement officer
in particular, Jacquelyn D. Hogue, was a regular in ticketing cars outside the
repair shops, the shop operators said and court records showed. When she
entered the industrial park, word spread rapidly and shop employees hustled to
move their customers’ cars inside before Hogue could slap a ticket on them.
Redwine, who’s been running Chantilly Service Center for 21 years, said he did
state inspections and emissions tests first thing in the morning, to make sure
no expired stickers were visible, but cars sometimes failed, and repairs
sometimes took time.
Shoaib Massoud, the operator of
A-Zee Auto Repair, said, “The cars are coming here for repair. I talk to her
[Hogue] politely, but no good. We are suffering, for sure.” Hogue declined to
comment, but a Fairfax police spokeswoman said Hogue was merely responding to a
request for service, and that Motz and Mariah had repeatedly sought heavier
parking enforcement.
In one episode in October 2014,
Hogue ticketed one of Redwine’s customers’ cars even though he had moved the
car into his garage. As Hogue walked toward him with the ticket extended,
Redwine said he snatched it out of her hand. He admitted using some insulting
language toward her, but not touching her. Hogue later went to a magistrate who
issued a felony warrant for Redwine. Redwine had to surrender himself at the
Fairfax jail, be handcuffed, booked, fingerprinted and photographed.
Then he went to trial, where
Fairfax prosecutors reduced the charge to a misdemeanor — Hogue is not a police
officer — but Redwine was convicted and sentenced to four days in jail. He
appealed to circuit court and in September 2015 a jury found him not guilty
after 20 minutes of deliberation. But he had to spend thousands in legal fees
to reach that result.
“The police ought to have better
things to do,” LeMunyon said after visiting the auto shops last fall, “than
play ‘Gotcha!’ with people who are trying to comply with the law.”
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[Va. lawmaker proposes ban
against ticketing cars waiting for state inspections]
There are already a number of
vehicles which are exempt from inspection in Virginia, to include antique cars
and newly purchased vehicles. LeMunyon in December proposed adding vehicles
“parked in an official inspection station’s designated parking area.” But as
the bill went through the General Assembly, the Senate changed it to vehicles
“parked on a highway and that have been submitted for a motor vehicle safety
inspection to an official inspection station.”
On Thursday, LeMunyon said the
new law is “an example of how government can address the practical concerns
that face people, and do so in a bipartisan way.”
The House approved the bill 99-0
in January, the Senate approved it with its change 39-0 in February, and the
House approved that amendment 38-0 in March. McAuliffe signed the bill
Wednesday, his spokesman Brian Coy said.
“One would think you don’t need
to legislate common sense,” said Dickson Young, Redwine’s attorney who won his
acquittal. “If the Fairfax police had exercised some common sense, legislation
wouldn’t have been necessary.”
Tom Jackman has been covering
criminal justice for The Post since 1998, and now anchors the new "True
Crime" blog.
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