This certainly leafed him with a bad taste in his mouth.
An 86-year-old Englishman was hit with a preposterous fine for littering after two enforcement officers saw him spit out a leaf that had blown into his mouth.
Roy Marsh had stopped for a rest while walking through a car park in the tourist town of Skegness, on England’s east coast, when the wind blew a “big reed” into his mouth, he told the BBC.
“I spat it out, and just as I got up to walk away, two [enforcement officers] came up to me,” Marsh said.
The bewildered octogenarian said that when officers accused him of spitting on the ground, he responded by calling one of them a “silly boy.”
However, Marsh quickly realized they were not joking — and he was fined £250 ($335).
“It was all unnecessary and all out of proportion,” he recalled to the BBC.
Marsh said the fine was expected to be reduced to £150 ($200) after an appeal, but he was still required to pay the full amount.
County councillor Adrian Findley described the case as one of many examples of officers being “heavy-handed” with enforcement in the seaside town, which relies heavily on tourism.
“They are taking it too far,” Findley told the outlet.
“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,” he added. “We can’t expect elderly people to chase crisp packets down the road if it’s windy.”
Findley said officers should be able to determine whether an incident is a “genuine accident” before issuing steep fines, or at the very least allow people the chance to apologize and rectify the situation.
East Lindsey District Council, however, told the BBC that enforcement officers would “only approach individuals seen committing environmental crime offences.”
The council added that enforcement actions are closely monitored and that patrols are “not targeted at any specific demographic” and are “not discriminatory.”
Marsh’s case is far from an isolated incident in the UK.
In October, a London woman was fined £150 ($200) for pouring a splash of coffee down a storm drain before boarding a bus.
Burcu Yesilyurt said she made a split-second decision to pour “just a tiny little bit” of coffee from her reusable cup down the drain to avoid spilling it during her commute.
“As soon as I turned around, I noticed three men enforcement officers chasing me, and they stopped me immediately,” she told the BBC.
The encounter left Yesilyurt feeling “shaky.”
“It was quite a shock,” she said.
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