Extremely Lame

Ah yes. The blessing and curse of bureaucracy. The good thing about it is that it’s a way to treat people relatively equally. The bad thing is that it’s a way to treat people equally badly, i.e., often it completely ignores extenuating circumstances in individual cases. This is one of those.

Steve Steinberg was issued a parking ticket on his vehicle and then had collections sent after him when he failed to pay it. Okay, that’s ffine. It’s standard procedure, right?

Well, it turns out that the violation happened while his car was stolen. While the government may not have known the vehicle was stolen when the tickets were issued, they certainly knew that was the case before they sent collections after him, as Mr. Steinberg happens to have copies of letters and faxes sent to the city a year before collections was called on him.

To add insult to injury, according to the article, it seems that his vehicle may have been stolen twice. It was initially stolen, but a DC detective seems to think that it may have been given to an unauthorized person from the impound lot.