Fines
A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting with the Police. Toni Haggart finally apoligised after many years for the suffering she caused when she unlawfully took my unicycle (she was still convinced she did it lawfully even though the Senior Sergeant said she was wrong). A notice went up on the Police Bully board (a bulletin joke which is a little too close to the truth since Police were unfairly bullying me) telling them not to harass unicyclists unless they are causing trouble. Specifically unless someone gets hurt and someone makes a complaint there is nothing wrong with riding on the footpath.
So I had my court appearance on Monday. I had one a while back too but that was a preliminary hearing. I used a similar arguement as I did last time, saying I was just being safe, travelling sustainably and the Police are unfair to issue fines for such orderly behaviour. I quoted Morley vs the Police, and the Police tried to say that it was old information and that they have interpreted up a new definition for unicycles which has it falling into the category of a vehicle (without changing the definition of vehicle). So they said “don’t listen to Rowan’s arguement it is based on old info and now we know its wrong”. I thought this was rather cheeky of them, but the justices deliberated, came back out, and said to the Police- your new definition doesn’t seem right cos of the lack of an if and an and, and there is a but" or something they got their legal terms messed up! I was so stoked to win this round, but unfortunately the Police have the right to appeal and waste more court time, and they are going to.
Hopefully round three will be a knockout for me, and we can ensure that NZ police will not have ambiguous laws about unicycles by the time Unicon comes. It may well take a long time since this has been brewing for over a decade.