Straight up BULLSHIT

I am not sure where to start this story…

July 31:

I’ll just start it back when we got a US Postal Certified letter a couple of weeks ago.  We ignored it thinking it was a debt collector of some kind and I was not going to waste my time and fuel to drive down to the post office to pick it up.  Little did we know it was going to cost us a butt load of fucking money by not picking it up.

This morning after my wife left for work I was getting ready to leave when the door bell rang.  It was a Summit County Sheriff’s Officer.  He proceeds to tell me that he has warrants for my wife and mine’s arrest.  Apparently, that certified letter was to show up in court regarding our un-payed taxes.  Are you ready for this?  The unpaid amount was $10.12.  They sent the sheriff after us with warrants for ten fucking dollars!  Are you fucking kidding me?  Ten dollars!  It was really for the missed court date but only because of the ten dollars.  It’s not like my wife didn’t file for the city of Barberton taxes.  She filed but something got messed up on the form and was off by $10.

The sheriff told us that we could just make an appointment for later today.  We are apparently one of two hundred Barberton residents that they went after.  The officer told us that he spoke with the judge and that if anyone gave him a hard time that he was to just serve the warrant and take them in.  If they were nice, that they could just make an appointment to go downtown Barberton later that day.  Which is what we did.  This whole time, I am not believing my wife about the ten bucks.  In my mind (of reasoning and common sense) there’s no way in hell the City of Barbertucky is going to issue warrants for our arrest for a measly ten dollars. We looked up our names in the Barberton city courts and we are now listed as CRIMINALS.

Check it out:

http://24.123.45.19/cgi-bin/mcaseno.cgi?num=0801911&sub=&pre=CRB&type=CR

Here is our Warrant info:

http://24.123.45.19/cgi-bin/mwarrant.cgi?pre=CRB&num=0801911&sub=&type=CR

So around noon we head downtown Barberton (were taking off of work to do this by the way) and had to be escorted in by the Summit County Sheriff Officer who served us the warrant.  We did that and now were sitting in court waiting for the judge to return.  Once court started, he called a few names and those people went ahead of us and then called my name.  I approached the bench and he asked me if I knew what this was about.   I said “I think so.”.  He proceeded to tell me that we were only one of seventy people to take care of our taxes.  He said all charges will be dropped if we just go to the financial office and pay the taxes that we owe (all that the judge knew was that we owed money he didn’t have the amount and I still don’t believe this is all over ten dollars).

We head over to the financial building and had to wait one hour since the only person that could pull our information was out at lunch.  She finally comes back and pulls the information and says “Wow.  Ten Dollars.  Okay…” with a surprised expression on her face.  So we pay it.  $10.12 to be exact.  I take the receipt and have to show it to the judge in order to drop the charges.

We end up doing that and when it was all said and done, our $10 tax turned into a $420 dollars that we owe now.  $100 each for both my wife and I for court costs, $70 each for the issued warrants and some other minor court fee…  Altogether it adds up to $420.00.  Whats the moral of this story you ask?  Go and pick up any fucking certified letters you get in the mail.

There should be a story in the Akron Beacon Journal this week sometime.  They came out to our house and interviewed us and took pictures.  I am not sure what they are going to say but should be interesting.  When I find the article, I’ll post it as a reply here for all to read.  Should be more or less about the warrants for our arrests for ten dollars.

- Trying to stick it to “THE MAN”: $10.12

- Warrants for our arrest and court fee’s: $420.00

- Having the city of Barberton bend us over and fuck us in the ass: PRICELESS.

-Dan

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UPDATE: Thursday August 7Th:

Channel 5 news just came by and interviewed us regarding this rediculous situation.  They are in partnership with the Akron Beacon Journal and will be airing the segment tonight August 7Th at 11PM.  Tommorrow, the story runs in the Beacon Journal.