$22,000 for dumping a couch? City boosts fines sharply and sues to collect

On a June afternoon in Inspector Robert Ritchie was driving an unmarked police car on West Glenwood Avenue in North Philly when he saw someone standing in the open back of a parked U-Haul moving truck The man Saul Miller was pushing a large brown sofa and a chaise off the truck and onto the sidewalk according to a police record When he noticed Ritchie he swiftly finished and got into the front customer seat A woman named Lorraine McAfee started driving the truck down the street Due to the fact that they were fleeing the scene I activated my police lights and sirens and pulled the U-Haul truck over Ritchie declared in the overview Miller promptly exited the voyager side cabin and ran in my direction I stopped him and stated him to remain still I am sorry I am going to pick all that stuff up and put it back in the truck Miller stated Ritchie according to the stilted language of the police account He reported he wasn t armed and didn t have ID on him Officers from the police th District arrived to detain him and McAfee and a detective came to take photos of the couches It should be noted that the brown sofa and brown chaise is so large that it is blocking the entire sidewalk forcing all pedestrians on the sidewalk to have to walk into the street to get around the short dumped furniture Ritchie mentioned in his assessment Dumping that led to lawsuits by the city of Philadelphia included incidents on the block of Warnock Street in April at left on the block of West Glenwood Avenue in June center and on North th Street in March right City of Philadelphia Billy Penn Miller and McAfee were not only arrested but were later also sued by the city s Law Department accused of violating anti-dumping laws and together owing the city nearly in penalties McAfee declared she hadn t been aware that Miller was illegally dumping until the police pulled her over I wouldn t do nothing like that she declared in an interview with Billy Penn She had paid various people for what she thought was legal disposal of the furniture she announced I m being falsely accused she declared They had cleaned out something for me I was taking stuff out of a house and I thought we were taking it to the dump McAfee who s a nurse was unaware that at a hearing in January a judge ruled for the city and endorsed that she must pay plus cleanup costs Records show that a court notice mailed to her came back as undeliverable I don t know what I have to do she commented I was supposed to get a court date I never got a court date Miller who lives about a mile from where the sofa was dumped never responded to legal notices and the judge ruled against him by default according to court records He could not be reached for comment A nearly million fine for dumping tires and trash The lawsuit against Miller and McAfee was one of the city filed against accused dumpers last year compared to just in according to a list provided by the Law Department The ramped-up effort has its roots in a surge in Philadelphia s chronic illegal dumping complication during the pandemic which led City Council to pass laws in toughening penalties Whereas previously a dumping event might have brought a single penalty of a limited hundred dollars then-councilmember Cherelle Parker spearheaded a change that sharply boosted fines to per dumped object for each person involved That allows massive fines to stack up for violations like depositing a sparse pieces of lumber on a street or vacant lot Not only is dumping an irresponsible business practice but it s also disrespectful to the neighborhood Parker announced at the time Since then Licenses Inspections and other agencies have been routinely issuing violation notices for or more which if not paid or settled can lead to enforcement through a civil lawsuit The biggest penalty the city has pursued in court followed the dumping of used tires and other items in Fairmount Park in May The alleged dumpers Shawn Patterson and Warner Burton didn t pay off their initial violation notices and are scheduled for a civil trial on April Burton announced he was sued because he rented a truck for Patterson a childhood friend who was supposedly moving out of his mother s house He indicates he never drove the conveyance himself or dumped anything He was stunned when he learned about the fines for him and for Patterson The biggest illegal dumping fine the city pursued through a civil matter in amounted to for two defendants City of Philadelphia Damn near a million dollars for what chosen tires Come on It s a money grab Burton stated He announced he accused they were targeted for enforcement because Patterson has a previous offense on his record Burton revealed he s now trying to pull together money both for a lawyer and for a funeral for his father who is dying It s a lesson to be learned from this Be careful who you allow in your circles Be a little bit more careful when it comes to helping people he stated Patterson could not be reached for comment The second largest fine for was imposed on Tirebul s Tire Shop on Ogontz Avenue for dumping more than tires in multiple locations in March The city sued and a judge affirmed the fine last August Tirebul s has since gone out of business according to a person who answered the company s phone number The man who declined to give his name reported he owns a new business at the same location He had heard the illegal dumping was not done by Tirebul s but by someone else using a wagon registered at the same address he mentioned Tirebul s former owner could not be reached for comment Huge fines minimal actual payments Over the past two years attorneys with the Law Department have filed suits asking for enforcement of million in penalties according to court records million in and million The city s lawyers have so far won judgments worth about million from those cases The actual amount of money collected is much smaller Dumpers often don t pay up after being cited and in a large number of cases never respond to the subsequent lawsuit When people do come in to settle the initial violation they typically end up paying about per item dumped or of the original fine stated Carlton Williams the city s director of Clean and Green Initiatives If they got a fine the Law Department will try to come up with a reasonable cost stiff enough for them to realize what they did was wrong but not so burdensome enough where they can t afford to pay it that it just doesn t have an impact he announced The city collected more than in Williams revealed That included legal settlements fines paid to the police and payments for violations issued by the Locality Life Improvement Effort CLIP for dumping and unkempt vacant lots Carlton Williams the city s director of Clean and Green Initiatives and Mayor Cherelle Parker spoke at a annual spring cleanup event last Saturday April Quinton Davis City of Philadelphia It s not much compared to the tens of millions of dollars Philadelphia spends annually on trash cleanup and enforcement a sum that has increased over the past months as part of Mayor Parker s Clean and Green initiative Collections for dumping violations could increase in the future however The city could try to garnish defendants bank accounts or seize their cars or homes Functionaries noted a process for judgment referral to collect fines is being developed We re going to continue to work with the Law Department to expand their capabilities to go after those judgments Williams explained Billy Penn We want to turn that into real money and to hold people accountable for the cleanups the restitution and the fines and the damages they re causing the city to deter this type of behavior once and for all Administrators note that the violations enforced through civil lawsuits represent just a tiny fraction of all illegal dumping and littering incidents CLIP alone issued violations in per the Sanitation Department Those include both lower-level Code Violation Notices for things like household trash infractions and pricier Notices of Violations for large-scale dumping The police and Licenses Inspections also separately issue additional violations Caught in a web of cameras While investigations sometimes begin when an officer happens to see someone dumping as with McAfee and Miller or when a resident calls police about an case most of start with a surveillance camera The Sanitation Department has about cameras installed at dumping hotspots feeding into banks of monitors at an office in Port Richmond Williams declared It s staffed by to Sanitation employees who look for images of newly dumped material and then rewind the video to show the dumper s conveyance and get a license plate number It s quite impressive noted Police Captain Shawn Trush who oversees the department s Environmental Crimes unit It reminds you of NASA They really have a full contingent and a lot of equipment A lieutenant and four detectives in Trush s unit also have access to their department s architecture of cameras Parks Recreation cameras and footage provided by owners of private cameras at homes and businesses Helpers removed thousands of tires from Tacony Creek Park last Friday April Ken Conly for illegally dumped tires from Tacony Creek Park last Friday Ken Conly Tookany Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership In one camera-driven inspection from February police were alerted to a load of construction material dumped on Newton Avenue in Lawncrest Called Snake Road by residents it s a chronic dumping site on the edge of Tacony Creek Park It s near a spot where contributors last week finished removing particular dumped tires Camera images revealed the construction material on Snake Road came from a dark blue truck and trailer labeled Fully Loaded Junk Removal and another camera indicated the same truck driving through Olney a scant minutes earlier A detective looked up the company s website and database searches turned up addresses for the owner Quaheem Payne in Norristown and Philadelphia Payne was sent a violation notice saying he was responsible for the dumping of bags of debris The city has determined that you violated Section - of the Philadelphia Code as the owner of the motorcycle who illegally dumped in the street on the block of Newton Ave it mentioned Therefore you are subject to a fine of for each individual item dumped bringing your total to in addition to in cleanup costs Last June the city sued Payne and his business and in February Judge Anne Marie Coyle in the Court of Common Pleas ruled they were liable for the fines In an interview Payne mentioned he has sought to settle the occurrence but his attorney missed a court date leading to the judgment They re in discussions with the city and expect to settle in the next sparse days he commented Payne mentioned he doesn t drive his company trucks and can t be wholly sure one of his employees didn t dump the material But he argued that the charge doesn t make sense because the dump site is a short drive both to his business and to Burns Co one of a limited waste recovery facilities in the area where he has accounts to deposit trash legally Burns is literally five minutes away from that spot My guy could have gone and dumped for free not free but free for him he mentioned Investigators may have seen his trucks with the company name clearly displayed near the dump site and thought we ve got to get somebody Payne disclosed He s driving through here every day The size of the fine was ridiculous he added They were suing me for What the heck could have been dumped for that amount In another typical affair police used surveillance from Pearce Street a small street on the edge of Bridesburg that curves under I- and past a lot filled with shipping containers Footage from July revealed a pile of seven large black trash bags on the street near the curb along with a white U-Haul truck according to photos in a court record Dumpers often use those kinds of trucks As in a multitude of dumping cases U-Haul provided the police with a rental receipt and a copy of the driver s license The truck had been rented in Perkiomenville by Kimberly Ann Wood who lived a limited blocks from the dumping site in Frankford according to a violation notice She was fined plus for cleanup costs The city sued the following March Wood didn t respond and Coyle unveiled her liable Wood could not be reached for comment An alternative to sparse criminal prosecutions The civil enforcement push represents a shift in strategy Previous administrations tried to prosecute particular dumping violations as crimes referring them to the District Attorney s office But Williams who previously oversaw sanitation as Streets commissioner in the Kenney administration disclosed the process was slow and resulted in sparse convictions With criminal prosecutions we didn t see the impact we yearned he disclosed However when you start to increase the fines that we ve done through the civil process we re starting to see people get huge judgments against them and we re starting to see a greater impact than we did with the criminal process Williams noted a civil event is much easier to move along because the rules of evidence are less stringent and the onus is on defendants to prove they weren t responsible for the violation a high burden given the footage of license plates and of people dumping that is available to city lawyers Trush estimated police undertook more than a dozen criminal dumping investigations last year but the DA s details dashboard shows just four people being charged with dumping or littering Over the past decade the office has charged between and people per year or an average of about annually The number of convictions was not announced District Attorney Larry Krasner last week broadcasted a new initiative to prosecute more short dumping and other quality of life crimes thanks to a funding boost from the Parker administration Accused dumper pleads I didn t do this Court records shed a few light on who the dumpers are The vast majority of those sued over the past two years lived in Philadelphia with just a handful listed as having addresses in Chester Abington Norristown Ardmore and other towns At least a limited of them owned or worked for small hauling or demolition businesses or in one development an auto body repair shop There are certain groups or businesses that like to hang outside the Home Depot or Lowe s They see you buying a new bathtub or shower and they re like do you want us to get rid of your trash for you They ll follow you right back to your house and take whatever you re ripping out Trush reported The homeowner pays the hauler who then dumps the material illegally on a street or vacant lot It s a serious complication he noted View this post on Instagram A post shared by Terrill Haigler yafavtrashman In the smattering of cases where court filings include comments from accused dumpers their responses to violation notices and lawsuits range from suggests they were misidentified as the dumper to contrition and pleas for mercy One defendant Estarlyn Tejada was accused of using a van to deposit a total of tires on five occasions at th and Wyoming in the summer of The intersection is surrounded by vacant lots that make up the Logan Triangle a neighborhood demolished in the s because it sat on top of a sinking toxic waste dump It s also a limited blocks from a -hour tire shop The city issued a fine and in cleanup costs After a judge ruled Tejada was liable he filed a response I didn t do this he hand-wrote on a court form A friend ask me to drive my van I let him to drive for day and I didn t know what he did If you check the camara you can see it is not my face How I m going to pay a violation that I didn t do he petitioned Speaking through a translator Tejada informed Billy Penn he missed three court dates because the city sent violation and legal notices to his mother s house and he didn t receive them in time He noted the friend who borrowed the van admits to dumping the tires and may be willing to explain that to a judge First he don t got that amount of money commented Tejada s wife Xiomairy Azcona Second he doesn t want to pay for something he didn t do So he wants to take the person who did that to the court I wasn t expecting to get caught Another suit accused Tacony resident Glenn Brown and his company Seth s Junk Removal of dumping pieces of furniture and other debris on Warnock Street at the southern edge of the Logan Triangle in May The city imposed in fines and costs Brown hired a lawyer admitted to the dumping and was ordered to pay View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sethsjunkremoval Sethsjunkremoval sethsjunkremoval In an interview he reported he did it because he d mistakenly undercharged a customer for a two-load hauling job He ended up paying more than he d expected to legally dispose of the heavy first load at Burns Company a waste recovery center in North Philadelphia and was trying to avoid taking a loss on the second load I announced f k that I want the for myself I was just being greedy he stated I ll know better next time It ll never happen again You don t have to worry about that Brown suggests he had never dumped illegally before but declared he knows other waste haulers who don t care about emerging the law and routinely do so He should have known it s not a good option for him he noted not only because it s illegal but also because his truck has a decal prominently displaying his company s name I wasn t expecting to get caught on camera he commented The little white cameras I thought they didn t work They work He expects to make small monthly payments toward the penalty but will seemingly never pay it all off he explained He complained that the fine is disproportionately high compared to the roughly cost of cleaning up the debris he dumped I thought I was going to get a little slap on the wrist I already was never going to do it again he explained This was my first offense and I was honest Why am I stuck with The reduction in fines for Brown is apparently smaller than the relief other defendants have been granted Settlement amounts are rarely mentioned in court documents but in one episode a defendant was originally fined about and settled for a little less than In another affair a fine for dumping bags and other debris was apparently reduced to according to notations on a judge s order Dumping is decreasing Maybe As a sign that would-be dumpers are becoming more hesitant in the face of doable big fines Williams mentioned complaints about illegal dumping were down in February compared to the same period last year Latest expansions of street-cleaning in business corridors curbside trash pickup vacant lot remediation and other programs have contributed to the drop he explained The Office of Clean and Green Initiatives is also beginning to use a new litter indexing system and we re starting to see less locations that are filled with trash-filled lots Williams announced Trush agreed I think it s getting better he mentioned Among residents the reporting may be going up and people are more conscientious now There s a little less apathy My guess is that the Clean and Green initiative has had a positive impact and we re doing the best we can to keep up with the complaints The public is the biggest component with this with them helping us out and giving us that information and utilizing the materials that we have here announced Deputy Commissioner Myesha Massey who oversees district partnerships for the department We need that locality input and buy-in in order to make our operations thriving Councilmember Anthony Phillips Parker s successor in the th District and the sponsor of a council hearing last month on dumping enforcement also noted the civil enforcement push is having an effect It s making a heck of a difference on the ground he communicated Billy Penn but we need more clearly Yet opinions vary on the new initiative s deterrent effect Accurately tracking an illegal activity is inherently demanding and the initiative is only a little more than a year old A Law Department spokesperson explained it s too early to tell if it s led to less illegal dumping Shari Hersh the founder of Trash Academy reported she s not aware of any noticeable abatement Trash Academy is a coalition of public groups that campaign to end dumping and Hersh frequently visits dumping hotspots and talks with neighbors of the sites Trash Academy s Clean Philadelphia Now initiative tracks dumping hotspots that have persisted despite the city s enforcement push Trash Academy Clean Philadelphia Now She just now went to a lot at th and Ontario in Hunting Park that has been dumped on for at least years she declared She saw four surveillance cameras nearby but the dumping continues during her visit the site was piled with construction and demolition debris children s clothing and other materials She called the widespread idea that cameras deter dumpers a mythology The city requirements to do much more she and other advocates say They cite ideas like using tire boots to immobilize dumpers trucks canceling their business licenses and publicly shaming them by publishing their names and pictures Hersh and others say it s also critical to create low-cost waste disposal options that small haulers like Glenn Brown can afford something cheap enough to overcome the appeal of just dumping in a neighborhood and possibly risking a fine There are vacant lots and miles of streets she mentioned You cannot enforce your way out of that The post for dumping a couch City boosts fines sharply and sues to collect appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY