Conditional discharge for woman in parking ticket case
A woman who bribed a Corporation of Hamilton employee in exchange for falsifying her parking tickets was given a conditional discharge in Magistrates’ Court.
Cassandra Trott, 56, from Pembroke, pleaded guilty to offering Paula Thomas, 63, “a few drinks” on one occasion and “lunch and a drink” on another, as a reward for Ms Thomas not processing her tickets through the corporation’s computer system between November 2019 and January 2020.
Corporation of Hamilton employees Paula Thomas, 63, from Smith’s and Lindell Foster, 48, from Devonshire, denied a charge of failing to put Cassandra Trott’s tickets into the city’s computer system when they appeared in Magistrates’ Court in April.
Ms Thomas is also charged with accepting two bribes from Ms Trott in exchange for not putting her tickets into the system and not issuing a summons for her “in anticipation of or agreeing to receive another advantage” from her.
She was also charged with lying about the status of another parking ticket to benefit Aneika Francis and concealing a summons issued to herself for not paying parking tickets. She denied all charges.
Ms Foster and Ms Thomas’s case will be mentioned again in Magistrates’ Court on September 5.
She initially denied both charges but later changed her plea to guilty.
At her sentencing last week, magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo highlighted the seriousness of the offences and told Trott that “bribery of any sort is unacceptable”.
However, he also mentioned Trott’s early guilty plea and that she was arrested for the offences, adding that “going through the system was bad enough”.
Mr Tokunbo gave Trott a 12-month conditional discharge and warned her to stay out of trouble during that time.
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