Louisiana state troopers were driving a pick-up truck with a Mississippi license plate when they parked in a private lot before disappearing into a sushi restaurant for lunch. The troopers, who were not in uniform, came out to find a boot on their car. Rather than pay the $90 fine, they bullied and arrested the parking attendant:

After Hardeway told the troopers he wouldn’t remove the boot until they paid a $90 fee, the troopers told him he was “interfering with their official duties” and arrested him, the lawsuit says, handcuffing him and “forcing him into the back seat of a police vehicle.”

“It was just a complete disregard for the private property of the owners of the lot, and when (Hardeway) tried to address that with them, they didn’t want anything to do with it,” Soileau said in a telephone interview....

According to Soileau, the troopers took Hardeway’s keys off his belt, searched his vehicle without a warrant and removed the boot themselves, saying at first that they intended to keep it as evidence. Soileau said a New Orleans police officer came to the scene but declined to take Hardeway to jail after hearing the gist of the allegations against him.