Here at Indie Coffee, with Jeffrey Okafo from Jin’s Chicken and Fish and Kelly, his girlfriend and business associate. (I overheard them talking to another reporter and decided I’d better get the scoop as well). I had already read about the story via the Critical Badger. According to Jeff, the issue stems from a series of unfair actions against his business by several actors in the Madison community: The first is several Langdon frats, who apparently complained about the noise and traffic Jin’s brought to the neighborhood at night, and forced Jin’s to move to Francis St instead. The next are the parking utility officials who work at the Frances St parking ramp across from Jin’s, and were annoyed enough by the supposed smell of Jin’s to redesignate (Jeff is not sure how or if it was legal) Jin’s normal parking spot to a “truck loading area only.” Next comes the parking enforcement officer who, according to Jeff and Kelly, has taken a special interest in ticketing Jin’s on Frances and has been unwilling to negotiate a solution with them. This problem climaxed with an alteraction between Jeff, the parking enforcement officer, and a police officer on May 25, 2008. According to Kelly: this officer has gone out of his way to harass Jeff in the past year. “Anytime this guy has the chance to do something to me, he does.” This guy came in the middle of the night to impound my car (because of repeat traffic violations) and had already called police back up. Jeff: Why was this guy waiting until the day before Memorial Day to impound my car? I went to go talk to the police officer to complain about the parking enforcement officer. Meanwhile, the guy is yelling at me to get on the ground and put my hands behind my back. I didn’t want to put my hands behind my back because I didn’t want him to think I had a weapon, so I put my hands over my head. Then he tasers me. I felt the taser, it didn’t take full effect, I grabbed the dart out of me. I’m standing 10-15 feet away from him, he says he’s gonna call another officer. I say that’s a good idea, and he interpreted that as a threat. He made it sound in the report like I was screaming in the middle of the street, which is completely untrue. He made all these false statements at the hearing. At the Vending Oversight Committee, they didn’t even know how to run the meeting. They just took the statements from the police and the parking enforcement guy and acted as if a decision had already been made. I said, why would I make a statement before going to court. They made it sound like I was guilty from the get-go, all this nonsense about lack of respect for a officer. The only problem I have is this one guy. According to Kelly, the parking enforcement officer has not been discreet about his special desire to screw them. Kelly: The night after I got Jeff out of jail, the parking enforcement officer came back and started harassing us again. Jeff: I’ve been tasered and pepper-sprayed over this guy and he comes back as if I’m a threat to this guy. Kelly: He’s very selective about his enforcement. I’ve seen him avoid giving other tickets. Jeff :The VOC changed the city ordinance to disallow any vending in a residential area (Langdon). Frances was a mutual understanding, where I would get foot traffic but not necessarily be in a residential area. It took about a year to rebuild the clientele, we were doing pretty well. We were on Frances, and we were parked in a truck loading zone. The parking utility people were complaining about the smell of our truck, talking about the smell of our food, that people are in the street. I say, these are the people coming from the bars, what do you want? They tell me I have to move to an area with a parking meter. I say this defeats the point of moving away from residential areas, because the metered area is the residential area. This parking enforcement guy is issuing me $30 tickets while I’m waiting in my car to park in the place where they want me We’d get there on an average day, and naturally we’d have to wait for a parking spot. We thought we’d be able to play the parking game, and if we got the $20 parking ticket, it would be better than to fight for parking later on. This parking enforcement officer at one point told me to put more money in the meter, and then brought the brochure over to us and told us we were “feeding the meter.” Prime example: I saw a family get ticketed while they were moving their stuff into the car on moving day. If you saw this guy, you would say this guy is outta control. I actively try to avoid this guy. I try to reach mutual agreements with this guy, you can’t reason with him. The trailer can’t go on the sidewalk, so I don’t know what to do about this. The other vendors are inconsistent, so they don’t deal with this as much. According to Kelly, the police rejected additional requests by witnesses from the Red Shed bar who wanted to testify in Jeff’s defense. As it stands, Jeff is charged with Resisting a Police Officer (Class A Misdemeanor), Disorderly Conduct (non-criminal municipal ordinance), and Operating a Motor Vehicle after Revocation (Misdemeanor traffic offense). Official documents here.