Citizen Portal
Sign In

Judge with 38 years on the bench recalls first-day case involving unpaid parking tickets

Municipal Court of Providence · October 30, 2025

Loading...

AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

A judge said a case from his first day on the bench — involving a woman with three children who owed about $300 in parking tickets — remains with him decades later. He said his father told him to show compassion, and that he never treated someone that way again.

An interviewer asked a judge with 38 years on the bench whether there was a particular case he still thinks about. The judge replied, "I get upset even thinking about it. I felt crumbled at that moment. I've never forgotten that. I, to this day, and I was on the bench for 38 years, I still think of that case. It's my first day on the bench."

The judge described the case: "I was on the bench and I asked my dad who was maybe the most decent man I ever met my wife. And so I said, dad, why don't you come down and view me? I'm sitting on the bench today for the first time. And a woman came before me who had 3 kids. She owed, I think, I don't know, $300 worth of parking tickets."

He said he offered the woman a payment program, and she told him she could not pay even under that arrangement. "And she said, I just can't pay them. I don't have the money. And I said, well, maybe I can place you on a payment program. She says, you can pay for me on payment program, but I can't pay anyway. So I said, okay." He recalled telling the woman to find the $300 and see the clerk, and warned that failure to pay could lead to the car being booted. "So the court's over. He said, dad, how did I do?" the judge recalled.

The judge said his father responded: "Frank, that woman, she was scared. You should have talked to her. You can't treat people like that, Frank." The judge concluded the recollection by saying, "And I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, it never happened again."

The exchange is presented here as given in the meeting transcript. The transcript does not specify the judge's full name, the court where he served, or the date of the exchange beyond the recorded timecodes.