Civil Disobedience: Paying Unjust Fines with Truculence

I'm writing from the UC Davis TAPS office. Right now, I am waiting as they count my $30 payment for a parking ticket, of which I paid with some bills, 4 quarters, a half-dollar coin, 40 nickels, and 1350 pennies wrapped in paper tubes. They were defensive about accepting it all, to say the least. I could sense the rage boiling beneath their drab blank slate faces. Their impatience was to be expected after all, as they're more accustomed to robbing scared submissive students that will hand over money with a smile. There's one paying out right now.
How did it come to this? The whole thing started with an ordinary parking fine.

It was a cheap shot. They swept in and ticketed 30 people at once, catching me in the wave. I noticed that on the ticket, it stated that my car was "TAN" when it is actually silver, so I wrote a grievance stating that the ticket did not describe my car. They wrote back with a piece of paper that said "DENIED" and "color is subjective". They included my DMV records and a creepy spreadsheet of my personal information for scare tactics. What's with that?

I did some research. First I considered the overpay method, where you pay the fine + 1 cent, forcing them to issue a 1 cent refund and preventing them from cashing your check. This turns out to be a myth. It doesn't work and the agency will just silently eat your overpayment.

Then I thought about the contamination trick, where you make the payment stub so dirty that the agency refuses to cash the payment. Well, that turns out to be a criminal offense.


Then I turned to the penny method, where you pay with a sack of pennies and say "HERE'S MAH PAYMENT, WOULD YOU LIKE TO COUNT IT?". The internet says it works as long as you (1) don't mail it in because it looks like a bomb, (2) don't show any emotion to avoid harassment charges, (3) are prepared for a libertarian backlash where you have to state your rights repeatedly to people that aren't listening.

Pennies, despite being real money, are so undesirable that they are only partially legal tender. Online legal forums provided uncertain guidance, some posts saying "No. Pay the fine normally. Don't be an asshole." written by the handle You_Are_Guilty. Other suggestions, like one that told me to freeze the pennies in a block of ice and pay with the ice pennies, sounded outright terrorist. Ugggh.

On the day, I submitted another mail-in judicial hearing for TAPS to waste their time on, which was actually a "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air" prank statement, and made my coinage payment. First the teller tried to fake me out by saying that they don't take pennies and that if they did, counting the money would take 2 weeks. I persisted, so the teller took my bag of coins and told me to wait in the lobby for 20 minutes for the coins to be counted. I started reading the Cal Aggie in the lobby.

After a half hour, the teller came out and starting closing the office. It was 5pm. She instructed me to write my student ID number my Jack-in-the-Box bag, which apparently had just been sitting behind the counter, untouched. What the hell.


After scribbling my digits on the coin rolls, I cordially asked for a receipt. They said they wanted to check my student ID for the second time. I handed it over. After some leering, they stood there staring at me, trying to get me to leave. I was still waiting for a receipt.
After about 5 minutes of obfuscation, they assured me that I would get an email once they "the girls fed it into the machine"...whatever that means. Greedy bastards. They put a lot of effort into giving me a hard time. TAPS is every bit as evil as they say.

So now I'm waiting for my email, contemplating the good I have done for society. I injected coinage into the money supply, saving the government from having to mint more. I've paid in legitimate US currency and enforced the validity of using coins for transactions as they rightfully should. I've avoided an 8% surcharge at the gay CoinStar machine. I've made the parking ticket ogres work for their blood money, saving others from getting robbed as well. Finally, I've tested the robustness of the system for fun and profit. Now, this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down and I liked to take a minute just sit right there I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air.