Yesterday, Thursday September 24th, I rode my bike down to the National Mall to express support & admiration for the Pope & to stand in solidarity with those of compatible views. When the session at Congress was over & the motorcade had driven out of sight, I headed back in a homeward direction, discovering that many streets were still blocked to traffic & pedestrians so I was forces to zigzag in a general homeward direction. It was largely coincidental that I soon found myself in proximity to the H. Carl Moultrie courthouse of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
Not long ago, I was summoned to appear at that courthouse to make myself available to serve on a jury. I showed up as ordered & spent an idle & mostly wasted day waiting to see if I would be called & selected. I was not; later in the day along with many other prospective jurors I was dismissed after having been given a plastic debit card drawn on Chase Bank (JPMorgan Chase) & credited with a dollar value of $4.00 which is the amount of Metro Fare here in DC & is what a person who is summoned & not selected for jury duty is paid. There were no written instructions on how these cards were to be redeemed but some general verbal instructions on the flavor of ATM's which would accept the cards without charging a fee. I did not rush out to claim my fee in cash as the amount due to me didn't seem overly significant. When I finally did, I sought out an approved ATM & was unable to cause it to dispense $4 or any other amount of money nor was I able to effect a tranfer of the sum to my own credit union account. Over the course of the follow several weeks I made a few more fruitless attempts. I will admit that by this time, the financial arrangements between the DC Court System & JP Morgan Chase was beginning to set off warning signals in my mind.
So, there I was on a weekday a block away from the courthouse; it was an easy decision to stop in seeking redress, repayment of debts owed or at minimum information. Pretty much immediately upon walking the bike into the open plaza leading up to the courthouse, I was accosted by a large uniformed & armed man demanding that I identify myself & state my business. I did state my name but then I said “I have business in the courthouse & I do not believe that there is any requirement that I answer any other questions.” He visibly eased up & said that most of the offices were closed for the Pope's visit & he was just trying to save me the trouble of finding that I couldn't conduct my business. He added that just about the only functioning service at the time was the information kiosk. I said that the information kiosk might very well be the only service I needed & he directed me to go into the building thru the security entrance. The woman at the information kiosk was at first defensive & I was angry but I tried to communicate that my anger was not directed a her personally & she was open to that concept. It took a bit of time – not an enormous amount – for me to explain my issue to her. Finally she told me firstly that she had no information on how I could claim my $4, that she believed that it was impossible to get $4 out of an ATM from a debit card, that my claim that this was a scam design to cheat people by the court system in cahoots with the bank was completely admissible, & finally that my assertion that I would refuse to show up for jury duty in the future unless that policy was changed would only result in my going to jail. I left with the remark that I hoped I would have sufficient courage to face jail in lieu of cooperating with a system designed to cheat me & disgrace the name of justice.
There is a bit more to this story which I almost forgot to mention. The woman at the information kiosk noticed that there existed a customer service number for Chase Bank on the back of my debit card & she suggested I call then. I agreed that was a good idea & thanked her. I did call the number this morning only to discover that my attempts to cash in the card had resulted in my $4 balance being reduced to almost nothing. I pushed buttons until being connected to what I think might have been a human being who told me that she could not cancel the services charges which had been assessed nor could she restore my balance. She suggested I might do something about the remaining balance - about a dollar - but I decided against any further efforts to seek justice. Actually, I decided to seek a different kind of justice!
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