I go without suspecting that I want to extend the registration, I'm annoyed that the stop light doesn't work on my old Megane, I fix what needs to be done and do the technical inspection, I finally submit all the necessary documentation and then they tell me: "Your vehicle has passed, but you haven't." You must report to the police station!”
How? Why?
I have no choice but to go to the police station in Božidar Adžija. I bring up the problem at the counter, the policemen on duty look at each other, and one says to me: "What does that have to do with us?" I repeat to them what they told me, they ask me if I am on a wanted list. Not that I know, I answer, and somehow I beg them to help me solve this Kafkaesque rebus.
They send me to the office for, I guess, traffic crime. I call the inspector in charge, who looks very stern and asks me what I really want from him. I explain to him, then I hear again: what does that have to do with me, am I on a wanted list and what is my occupation?
Journalist, I say, I am not a criminal, if I were I would not come to the police station voluntarily. The features of the plainclothes policeman's face soften, he asks me for the license plate number and enters, in a neighborly way, to do it for me, into the system to see what is happening.
Here he is, he says, the registration is blocked by the public bailiff, it will be because you haven't paid a fine. And reveal to me the name of the public blocker.
An executioner out of the blue
Yes, I explain to him, that extortionist sent me some bill for the wrong parking that I paid about three weeks ago and thought I had settled the racket. And before that, nothing: no warning, no notice, no warning in the mailbox, not from the Parking Service, not from Šapić's utilities, not from the police, not from anyone.
I thank him for helping me, although he didn't have to because it doesn't belong to his job description. He looked at me with understanding, let's say goodbye in a friendly way.
I get out of the station and furiously, on the street, I google secikesa because of which I can't register my car and drag myself around the city. I call several phones and get an answering machine that tells me they are open until 15 p.m.
Entrepreneurs and partnerships
I decide that the next day I will go personally to the Karađoređ Park where it is located. There are two women sitting at the counter buried in documents. Controlling my anger, I tell them why I came. Yes, yes, says one looking at the monitor, we have blocked your vehicle registration. I know that, I say, and do you see that I paid for what you asked of me. She looks again and sees that I am.
Here, I immediately write an order to unblock it, he says, it will take one, two or three days. So since you blocked me when I paid you for the racket, I ask something louder and I don't get an answer.
And it seems to me to be simple: the more interventions the public bailiff has, the more he can charge, because they are, in the first place, entrepreneurs, which is nicely written on the website of the Ministry of Justice: "The public bailiff performs activities as an entrepreneur or as a member of a partnership companies whose members can only be public executors. The public bailiff is appointed by the Minister of Justice for the area of the high court and the area of the commercial court".
Systemic failure, punishment for citizens
And the essence of the problem is easy to understand: some state or parastatal institution did not do its job, and the citizens are paying. Either the Post Office, or the Parking Service, or the Communal Police or the Public Enforcement Officer made an appointment, but countless citizens of this country are victims of the fact that for banal traffic violations, such as wrong parking, they simply do not receive a notification that they have to pay a fine; nor that they fell into the clutches of public executioners; nor that they ended up in court; nor that an arrest warrant has been issued for them.
Thus, a fine of two or three thousand dinars turns into a racket of 20 or 30 thousand dinars, which is how much you have to pay for the "service" of public bailiffs. So you complain to whoever you want. Either you will pay, or you, as in this specific case of mine, the car remains trapped, so complain to whoever you want.
Traps in Resavska
And it can be even worse. When you receive, for example, again without any prior notification or warning, one of twenty enforcement judgments by the judges of the Criminal Court in Belgrade that you have to pay a fine of 25.000 dinars for each one - not for wrong parking, which you did wrong and which costs some 2500 dinars, but for not responding to the court, so if you don't pay, they will arrest you and take you to Padinjak.
IMG_8725Parking spaces near SKC / Photo: II
There is no legal remedy against the execution verdict, there is no possibility of appeal, you no longer have the possibility to officially complain that if you are not a criminal, you are not crazy to not respond to the summons of the court so many times, to explain that you did not respond because you did not receive a single summons .
The reader will think that he needs it now, that arrogant driver who doesn't pay attention to parking bans. However, there are traps (there are four of them in Resavska Street) that naive drivers fall into every day. In areas where zoned parking is allowed in the middle of marked parking spaces, without any sign or warning or logic, there are unmarked spaces where parking is prohibited. People don't see it, it's crowded, trams are running, or it's dark or it's raining, and there's no reason for them to think that they parked somewhere where it's not allowed - they didn't block anyone, and there are cars parked on the left and right, on at the beginning of this series of parking spaces, a yellow sign is visible indicating that these are parking spaces in another zone.
So, don't suspect anything, and if, in this particular case, you live inside another zone and leave your car in the same place for a while, Oko sokolovo records a new offense every day, and you have no idea that you have done something wrong because the fines do not arrive in mailbox.
By the way, until the introduction of Falcon's Eye, parking was allowed in those places, i.e. no one is penalized for parking there.
Many roads lead to the Post Office.
Somewhere backdoored some time ago, it was adopted that the court does not have to have proof that the citizens were served with a summons, the utility companies, the debt collectors of Oka Sokolovo, the Parking Service, the public bailiffs. The court, I guess, sends summons like mail, which too often turns out to be like a bottle with the victim's address thrown into the Danube, so if it arrives, it arrives.
But about that another time. The sequel, unfortunately, follows. Because state institutions should be a service for citizens, and not be instruments for pocketing the remaining change from the budget of impoverished people. State institutions work for the benefit of citizens where the government is replaceable, because otherwise it would not be re-elected. And here, in our country, the irreplaceable parties that occupied the state entered into a public-private partnership with private entrepreneurs who collect debts.
Just in case, check that there is no warrant issued for your arrest for some harmless, unpaid traffic violation.
