
An Ontario truck driver was slapped with six tickets, as he left a food bank dropping off Christmas donations.
Every year, dump truck driver Mark Hoffman attends the Santa Claus parade in New Hamburg, Ontario, Canada, to collect holiday food donations for the less fortunate. Every year, for the last fifteen years, it has gone without a hitch. This year, however, he noticed two officers watching him as he collected the donations.
On December 3, as usual, he drove along the parade route, collecting donations. Then, he waited at the fairgrounds for the crowd and traffic to clear before heading to the food bank. But Hoffman noticed the police officers kept moving with him, and even waited him out at the fairgrounds.
He headed onto the food bank at Wilmot Family Resource Centre, and the officers still followed him. Finally, as he exited the premises, they struck in with the flashing lights.
“The [police] officer approached as we were unloading the food into the Wilmot Family Resource Centre, wearing that bright green, reflective jacket, and I knew,” said Hoffman. “I kept thinking ‘here comes the Grinch in the bright green jacket.’”
They asked him to pull into a nearby gas station, and performed a full inspection of the truck.
He was given a laundry list of offenses including “failure to surrender a daily inspection report, failure to surrender daily inspection schedule, failure to display a device on the trailer of the truck, and improper means of attachments.”
“I referred to him as Officer Grinch. I truly can’t understand his mindset,” Hoffman told CTV Kitchener. “He definitely has to be out there to keep our roads safe, but this was a Santa Claus parade.”
But, the police inspectors had a different story, saying they believed the truck was unsafe.
“Our officers were concerned about the condition of the vehicle,” said Inspector Mike Haffner of the Waterloo Regional Police Service.
“We would hate to be on the other side of this conversation, that this vehicle was deemed unsafe and caused a collision that ended in the death of an individual,” Haffner said. “Our officers took the appropriate action to educate that individual—not only through fine, but also through a number of warnings.
Hoffman counters by saying that the offenses were all due to the vehicle no longer being used for commercial purposes. He just keeps it around his farm property for various tasks on the land. And, he brings it out once a year for the Christmas parade, but it is in no way unsafe.
Hoffman said this has, however, not dampened his holiday spirit. He will continue to help people, and will collect donations again next year.