One has to wonder about this report.
Breaking wind in public may be a social taboo, but it’s not often that people face financial consequences for it.
But that was the case for one man in Austria, who was fined €500 ($564) after doing so at police in Vienna earlier this month.
The city’s police have defended the fine, saying it was for more than that.
. . .
… the police department said the suspect “had already behaved in a provocative and unco-operative manner” when he was approached by police in the early hours of 5 June.
He then rose from a park bench, “looked at the officers and apparently intentionally released a massive intestinal wind in the immediate vicinity of the officers”.
And, as the suspect found to his own cost, members of the city’s police force “prefer not to be farted at”.
There’s more at the link.
That’s a pretty large fine. One wonders whether the flatulence was particularly odiferous, or aimed rather than let go at random, to attract such a penalty.
Oh, well . . . at least it shows that the police in Vienna are inde-fart-igable in their pursuit of crime!
Peter
Oh, the depths to which you will plunge in the opportunity to make a new pun. I salute you, sir!
Ashbutt, quick, sit on his keyboard. Don't let him pun again today!
Use of a chemical weapon while resisting arrest?
Fined big time for farting…that is government control!
Chemical warfare… LOL
Proof that cutting the air with onions can still bring tears … even at the other end.
Under the legal doctrine of "He who smelt it, dealt it", there is no way he could ever be sustainably convicted.
Short of concurrent IR photography of gaseous emanations from the accused, no one can be proven to be the farter in question, and no jury could ever summon the necessary belief beyond a reasonable doubt to return any conviction.
(For those who will knee-jerk offer recourse to sound detection as sufficient probable cause, I refer you to the YouTube works of Jack Vale, and the talk show appearances of the late Leslie Nielsen. No, really.)
And even if you could secure any such photographic bona fide proof, it's an involuntary action, and as completely unavoidable a biologic function as respiration or perspiration.
The idea of issuing any fine for it is therefore quite simply ridiculous, and probably the most judicially jackassical thing ever attempted in recorded history (which is quite a high bar over which to vault).
Considering the general European aversion to either regular bathing or use of personal hygiene products, one must needs wonder how they noticed the incident to begin with.
The defense rests.