Harassment via traffic citations. Anything I can do?

Traffic and Parking

I am in the US in the state of Florida.

About three years ago, my wife and I moved into a house that is labeled as historic and is protected by our local historic preservation society. It has a two car “garage” that can’t fit any modern vehicles as it was built in the 20’s. With that said, we park our cars in the drive way. The house is built closer to the road than most houses, likely due to the time period when it was built.

Since we moved in, there was been an older gentleman who drives by every other day and calls the police on our house for us parking on the “side walk.” Most of the time, “Community” officers will come knock on the door, explain that they are just writing a warning because an anonymous tip keeps coming in for this house that someone is parked on the side walk. For the most part, however, these community officers don’t seem to care enough to write a violation that would involve a fine.

The other day however, we received a Warning Citation from the local police department. This has been going on so long and I am so frustrated. I want to end this before they write a ticket with an actual fine and it becomes a bigger deal. It’s the same man who drives by my house and calls the police every other day and I am sick of it. Most of the people in our neighborhood are quite a bit older than my wife and I, so I am not sure how to take this whole debacle.

What can I do? I know that technically we are parked on the side walk, but no one actually seems to care. It’s difficult because our drive way is so short that it does technically intersect with the side walk. I’m worried though that on a long enough time line, this is going to escalate. Is there anything I can do about this anonymous man constantly calling the police on my house for this extremely petty thing?

Edit: I realize now that the title is not great and this is not directly "harassment." Sorry for the poorly worded title, but it was all I could think of to describe the situation

Posted Dec 16, 2018, 11:05 PM UTC · edited

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