More on the Parking.

This is a followup post to "I can guess how this one will turn out", "Well done, the Star" and "Pylons, Impark and a very big bit of weird".

The Star now has a follow-up story on this: "Unit Park responds on use of pylons at Cirque tent". Short version? Unit Park says, `yeah it wuz us who done it but we dids it to maintain da traffic flow and prevent traffic jams, 'cuz ya got a nice traffic flow here and ya wouldna wanted sometin' ta happen to it, wouldja?'.

Note to Mr. Hudson: Nobody delegated law enforcement authority to you. You had no more authority to block that street than I do to rush out and start ticketing people for jaywalking. The difference, though, is that if I rush out and start spewing tickets and collecting money I will be arrested. You, on the other hand, are completely safe and you know it. In fact, you are so confident of this that you admit to your actions in writing to the largest circulation newspaper in the country.

Okay. We have:
>> A blocking of City roads, admitted on the record by the blocker ("Unit Park ... was the operator... [Its]vice president Bill Hudson ... declined an interview but emailed confirmation to us that his company put out the pylons and explained why Unit Park thought it was necessary to eliminate the on-street parking ...")
>> The blocking was illegal ("[The Star] checked it out at city hall and determined that [Unit Park] had no authority to put out pylons").
>> Unit Park may have made a profit of about $150,000 from this illegal act.
In short, a crime: the obtaining of money by false pretenses. And it is clear what law enforcement will do about this.

Nothing.

I repeat: nothing will come of this. If you or I threw up pylons blocking legal parking on our street and earned $5 from drivers having to park on your lot we would be in the back of a cruiser in fairly short order. But you and I aren't corporations, are we? This is not some angry anti-capitalist rant; I'm a capitalist myself. No, it is rather the simple telling of a disturbing and infuriating fact: there is something about crimes committed by companies that causes police forces to go all giggly and shy, the tongue-tied wallflowers of the law enforcement world. Sad and pathetic, but true. Disgusting and a dereliction of duty? Also true.