A pensioner was hit with a £250 fine by overeager litter wardens for spitting out a leaf that blew into his mouth.
Roy Marsh, 86, was slapped with the ridiculous ticket after the incident while out walking in a seaside town.
The pensioner said he was accosted by two council enforcement officers after pausing for a rest near some reeds on a windy day in Skegness, Lincolnshire, earlier this year.
‘As I was sitting there, a gale blew a big reed into my mouth. I spat it out and just as I got up to walk away, two guys (enforcement officers) came up to me,’ he said.
Mr Marsh was told by one of the officers at the South Parade Car Park in the town that he had been seen spitting on the floor. He claimed he told the officer he was being a ‘silly boy’.
‘It was all unnecessary and all out of proportion.’ Mr Marsh added.
A penalty of £250 was given after the incident in February, which was subsequently lowered on appeal to £150, which Mr Marsh, who lives in the town, paid.
‘It was something that could have happened to anyone,’ he said. ‘It’s left me anxious about going out.’
Mr and Mrs Marsh told how the enforcement officers yelled after him: ‘Hey, you, we’ve got reason to believe you’ve been spitting.’
Mr Marsh, a father-of-one and grandfather of two, said: ‘I was shocked when they approached me. I don’t know where they appeared from.
‘I’ve been back down there filming today for the local TV news, and it was windy again – a leaf smacked me right in the face while we were walking, so it could have happened again today.’
Mr Marsh said the issue resurfaced after he was spoken to again several weeks later while walking around the boating lake. He explained that he had taken a tissue from his pocket and tucked it into his glove, but had not dropped anything.
Mr Marsh used to run a bus and taxi company with his 76-year-old wife before their retirement.
Mrs Marsh said: ‘Roy didn’t spit – how many 86-year-olds do you know who go around spitting? It’s a dirty habit.
‘This really upset him. We’ve watched these officers approach many older people since. It’s like they are bullies.’
The leaf incident came to light after Mr Marsh’s daughter posted about it on Facebook last month – and attracted dozens of comments reporting similarly over-zealous behaviour by enforcement officials.
Jane Fitzpatrick said she was ‘disgusted’ at learning about the incident from Mr Marsh and his wife, Anne.
Ms Fitzpatrick wrote: ‘Recently, Dad, who has walking difficulties but does his best to walk every day around the boating lake, inhaled a small leaf that made him choke. Dad has severe asthma and a heart condition; he managed to cough up the leaf and spit it out. (just the leaf).’
She said her parents now ‘regularly watch these officers’ and have seen them approach older people ‘many times’, even when something falls out of their pocket accidentally.
She accused enforcement officers of ‘unreasonably harassing and terrorising older people’.
Councillor Adrian Findley said he contacted the council after receiving a number of complaints about similar ‘heavy-handed’ incidents in the seaside resort.
Mr Findley, who represents Reform on Lincolnshire County Council, said he had been approached by other ‘angry residents’ who had recounted similar experiences.
He told the BBC: ‘They (enforcement officers) are taking it too far. If I came here on holiday and was given a £250 fine, I wouldn’t want to risk coming back.
‘There needs to be discretion about how they (enforcement officers) issue fines. We can’t expect elderly people to chase crisp packets down the road if it’s windy.
‘If it looks like a genuine accident, then give people the opportunity to apologise and pick it up.’
East Lindsey District Council said enforcement teams, who work on behalf of the authority, would ‘only approach individuals who have been seen committing environmental crime offences’.
The council said it closely monitored enforcement actions and patrols were ‘not targeted at any specific demographic’ and are ‘not discriminatory’.
Well, evidently, they are if they are targeting elderly people.
The best thing to do with these enforcement officers is to simply walk away – they can only fine you if you give them your name and address. Frankly, this is tantamount to legal extortion.
I see migrants spitting on the floor all the time, but do they get fined? Perhaps not!
These enforcement officers have no legal powers. Just tell them to call the police if they want to continue the conversation, and if they lay their hands on you, you can then have them arrested.
I bet they wouldn’t approach a violent-looking thug for littering, no, of course not, they’re little mini Hitlers who go for the frail and weak.
Makes you laugh, really. Bin men go out on strike for weeks at a time, and yet we get fined for dropping a teeny bit of litter – they clearly want us to do their job for them.
Without a tiny bit of litter, there would be no litter pickers, which would suite our government down to the ground because then they don’t get paid and would be out of work, but our government would still expect them to find a job, but what job, you just took it away from them, and then our government moan people are not working, oh do behave!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 