A Michigan man is fuming after getting hit with a parking ticket for keeping his car idly running in his driveway.
“Let’s all take a moment to thank officer dipsh-t K. Keary for wasting the taxpayer’s money and giving me a ticket for warming up my car in my own damn driveway,” Nick Taylor, 24, of Roseville fumed in a Facebook post of a photo of the ticket.
Taylor said he started his car last Tuesday to warm it up in the cold weather and went inside for five minutes – and when he came back out his car had been ticketed, Taylor told WDIV Local 4.
“I was furious when I saw it,” Taylor told the news outlet.
The Roseville officer wrote on the ticket, “vehicle parked in drive…with keys in ignition motor running – no one around.”
Taylor said he wished the officer would have knocked on the door before slapping him with a ticket.
“That would have been respectful,” the young man said. “I had no clue that this was a law, an ordinance.”
Roseville police Chief James Berlin told WDIV said if the key is in the car, it’s a state and local violation since someone could steal the car, adding that an automatic start car would have been fine.
“You’re putting the public at risk,” Berlin said. “This is purely a public safety issue.”
“You see the disparaging comments he made about my officer…Drop dead,” Berlin told the network.
Taylor’s Facebook post has been shared more than 13,800 times with many showing their support for Taylor.
“I would not pay them a dime and tell them they could shove it up their butts 4 different kinds of sideways. Extortion freaks,” Facebook user Tammy Elaine Bentley wrote.
A day later Taylor posted to his Facebook page saying that he “retracts” his statement of calling the officer a “dipsh-t.”
“Thinking it over, it wasn’t the appropriate thing to say because I do respect police officers for what they do for us every day,” said Taylor, who is scheduled to appear in court later this month.