A little comment on the Ghent mayor's office intentions:
The normal way of doing things is this: When a police officer notices an illegally put up poster, he has to do all the necessary paperwork to aid the public prosecutor in his legal actions against the person or organisation who put up the poster. That's, if the responsible person or organisation is known. If not, the police officer will have to do some inverstigative work.
After that it has to go to trial and could cost the defendant 120 EURO per poster, while costing the community much much more. (cleaning, police hours...)
You can see the means and hours that would have to go into this...for a poster. Still, the city wants to get rid of the problem. Hence, this idea.
It's true that from a legal point of view, the city itself is culpable of putting up stickers where it's illegal to do that. They've admitted to that, but say that it's a choice between doing the 120 EURO fine thing or the quick and more cost effective way while getting public attention for the problem they want to address and create awareness for.
And since the story was all over the news...a job well done.
The normal way of doing things is this: When a police officer notices an illegally put up poster, he has to do all the necessary paperwork to aid the public prosecutor in his legal actions against the person or organisation who put up the poster. That's, if the responsible person or organisation is known. If not, the police officer will have to do some inverstigative work. After that it has to go to trial and could cost the defendant 120 EURO per poster, while costing the community much much more. (cleaning, police hours...)
You can see the means and hours that would have to go into this...for a poster. Still, the city wants to get rid of the problem. Hence, this idea.
It's true that from a legal point of view, the city itself is culpable of putting up stickers where it's illegal to do that. They've admitted to that, but say that it's a choice between doing the 120 EURO fine thing or the quick and more cost effective way while getting public attention for the problem they want to address and create awareness for.
And since the story was all over the news...a job well done.
Take care, Karl (pinching the ostrich)