It's been a while hasn't it? I haven't handed out a Hall of Shame Award in a long long time. Well I haven't had anyone piss me off badly to do so till this week!

So this week my first Hall of Shame inductee of the year 2008 and the 8th Award so far goes to the Mount Pleasant Town Court in Valhalla NY! Those bastards had me so angry this week I wanted to scream.

4 years ago I got a speeding ticket on the Sprain Brook Parkway and one that I absolutely did not deserve. For one I enjoy driving and just don't speed and the speed at which the bastard clocked me was nearly impossible for me. I have never sped at that speed EVER. He also pulled over 5 people at once, got their conversations along with their speeds confused. Frankly he screwed up and I wasn't having any of it so I contested it. So my court date just came up. ***Yeah from 4 years ago***

It took me 2+ hours to get to Valhalla. When I got to court we were all told to sit down. Apparently people had different times on their appointments so there was a group for 9:00 am and one for 10:00 am and so forth. I get there at 8:30 am, I had a 9:00 am appointment. There were 100s of people waiting. Sitting around 10:00 am rolls around. The guard comes in to tell us we need to line up in the hallway to meet with the Prosecutor for a plea bargain. The Prosecutor is now ready at 10:00 am because he's under the weather!

OK. Except people just bumrush to the hallway and there is no accountability of who came in first and who just walked in. People who had just walked in were first in line. Then they tell people, too many of you in the hallway go sit down and we'll call you. No one is monitoring so while we are all sitting down waiting to be called, people are walking in from the side door and getting on line and the line doesn't go down and no one knows what's going on. Finally somehow I get to meet with the Prosecutor at 10:50 am. I took two trains and a cab to get there I was having my say and I stated my point.  My points are dropped, the ticket is dropped, I have to pay a court fine, the Prosecutor signs off. Now I have to go into court and the Judge will call my name and I go up and meet with the judge, tell him what happened and I'm on my merry way.

I get in court, the Judge Nicholas C Maselli, has taken a "recess". He'd been in court since 9:30 am or so and since there was only one Prosecutor and 100s of people and he wasn't moving fast enough not too many cases came to him so he was sitting around, chatting and saw maybe 6 or 7 cases. So the Judge takes lunch at 11:00 am! Now we all have to wait till the Judge is back to hear us so we can be on our way.

The Judge comes back sits down and starts at 1:10 pm! People are fuming at this point. There is a bathroom but no water, no vending machine and you can't leave court. There was a pregnant lady and a Diabetic and several old people. What the fuck. It this some way to treat people? Disgusting. They aren't animals.

Then I find out that the fine is decided by the Judge based on how you look!! I can't even make this shit up. If you showed up in a city uniform like a Firefighter or a Nurse your fine was bullshit. If you showed up presentable your fine could be easily $300. Mine was $225. I seriously saw 20 people go ahead of me for the exact same offense, speeding, some with freaking points on their licenses and there was no rhyme or reason to the fine and the Judge literally looked at people and fined them. What pissed me off was this Nurse that went up that got charged $50 was standing in line in front of me chewing her gum snapping it bragging about how this was the 3rd time she was here and how she needs to get a radar detector in her car. She was actually fucking speeding while I wasn't and because she showed up in a uniform she got $50. Bullshit.

I intend to write to the Town of Mount Pleasant and Valhalla, the governer, the Senator and anyone that will listen to me but it's a total scam. I think more than anything what bothered me was how they treated the people and how there was absolutely no respect for anyones time or any value given to how far people had traveled or the fact that they were made to wait around in a cold open courtroom with not even water to drink. There were people from Brooklyn and upstate New York who'd traveled a long time to get there.

So my 8th Hall of Shame award goes to the Mount Pleasant Town Court for running a complete scam and showing complete disregard to the very citizens that fund all those beautiful buildings they had pictures of up on the walls while people waited!!