A young family in the United Kingdom fears they won’t be able to celebrate Christmas this year after being hit with two fines totaling around $2,160 over a trashed trash bag, which someone allegedly ransacked and searched before give up.
“How we are going to deal with the fine and Christmas, I don’t know. That’s a lot of money to pay […] especially for something we didn’t do,” lamented Briton Abigail Swinn, from Boston, England, to the BBC on Wednesday.
On October 31, the 24-year-old young mother reportedly “shed a few tears” when the police knocked on her door to hand her and her partner two fines of 600 pounds sterling each, totaling around 2,160 $, for leaving their waste lying around in a public parking lot, she confided.
With both feet in the renovations, the woman had placed her garbage bin on the side of the road the day before, along with two additional bags, after even checking on the city council website that she was allowed to drop up to four.
But according to her, the bags must have attracted looters, who would have grabbed them to check their contents in a public parking lot located only about ten meters away.
Thanks to certain objects in the bag, the police managed to find the owners of the waste, imposing the bill on them despite their attempts to explain the situation, continued Abigail Swinn to the British media.
“These are [les voleurs] who escape unscathed and we who recover the damage,” added the mother of a little girl to the BBC, indicating that she felt “powerless”.
Even after filing a police report, they are left with no option but to appeal the fines in court, or pay the sum within the first 10 days to have them reduced to £400 each.
The city is already waging a heavy battle against these looters-pollutants, who risk a fine of 1,000 pounds sterling – around $1,800 – if they are caught in their crimes, according to the British media.
“We take allegations of environmental crimes very seriously as they impact cleanliness and safety. If a member of the public contacts us regarding a fixed penalty notice, we undertake to consider the circumstances of each case,” a council spokesperson was quoted as saying by the BBC.
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