The Universe of Discourse

How our toy octopuses got revenge on a Philadelphia traffic court judge

[ Content warning: possibly amusing, but silly and pointless ]

My wife Lorrie wrote this on 31 January 2013:

I got an e-mail from Husband titled, "The mills of Fenchurch grind slow, but they grind exceeding small." This silliness, which is off-the-charts silly, is going to require explanation.

Fenchurch is a small blue octopus made of polyester fiberfill. He was the first one I ever bought, starting our family's octopus craze, and I gave him to Husband in 1994. He is extremely shy and introverted. He hates conflict and attention. He's a sensitive and very artistic soul. His favorite food is crab cakes, followed closely by shrimp. (We have made up favorite foods, professions, hobbies, and a zillion scenarios for all of our stuffed animals.)

In our house it was well-established canon that Fenchurch's favorite food was crab cakes. I had even included him as an example in some of my conference talks:

    my $fenchurch = Octopus->new({
                        arms => 8,
                        hearts => 3,
                        favorite_food => "crab cakes"
                    });

He has a ladylove named Junko whom he takes on buggy rides on fine days. When Husband is feeling very creative and vulnerable, he identifies with Fenchurch.

Anyway, one time Husband got a traffic ticket and this Traffic Court judge named Fortunato N. Perri was unbelievably mocking to him at his hearing. Good thing Husband has the thick skin of a native Manhattanite. … It was so awful that Husband and I remember bits of it more than a decade later.

I came before Fortunato N. Perri in, I think, 1996. I had been involved in a very low-speed collision with someone, and I was ticketed because the proof of insurance in my glove box was expired. Rather than paying the fine, I appeared in traffic court to plead not guilty.

It was clear that Perri was not happy with his job as a traffic court judge. He had to listen to hundreds of people making the same lame excuses day after day. “I didn't see the stop sign.” “The sun was in my eyes.” “I thought the U-turn was legal.” I can't blame Perri for growing tired of this. But I can blame him for the way he handled it, which was to mock and humiliate the people who came before him.

“Where are you from?”

“Ohio.”

“Do they have stop signs in Ohio?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Do you know what they look like?”

“Yes.”

“Do they look like the stop signs we have here?”

“Yes.”

“Then how come you didn't see the stop sign? You say you know what a stop sign looks like but then you didn't stop. I'm fining you $100. You're dismissed.”

He tried to hassle me also, but I kept my cool, and since I wasn't actually in violation of the law he couldn't do anything to me. He did try to ridicule my earring.

“What does that thing mean?”

“It doesn't mean anything, it's just an earring.”

“Is that what everyone is doing now?”

“I don't know what everyone is doing.”

“How long ago did you get it?”

“Thirteen years.”

“Huh. … Well, you did have insurance, so I'm dismissing your ticket. You can go.”

I'm still wearing that earring today, Fortunato. By the way, Fortunato, the law is supposed to be calm and impartial, showing favor to no one.

Fortunato didn't just mock and humiliate the unfortunate citizens who came before him. He also abused his own clerks. One of them was doing her job, stapling together court papers on the desk in front of the bench, and he harangued her for doing it too noisily. “God, you might as well bring in a hammer and nails and start hammering up here, bang bang bang!”

I once went back to traffic court just to observe, but he wasn't in that day. Instead I saw how a couple of other, less obnoxious judges ran things.

Lorrie continues:

Husband has been following news about this judge (now retired) and his family ever since, and periodically he gives me updates.

(His son, Fortunato N. Perri Jr., is a local civil litigation attorney of some prominence. As far as I know there is nothing wrong with Perri Jr.)

And we made up a story that Fenchurch was traumatized by this guy after being ticketed for parking in a No Buggy zone.

So today, he was charged with corruption after a three-year FBI probe. The FBI even raided his house

I understood everything when I read that Perri accepted graft in many forms, including shrimp and crab cakes.

OMG. No wonder my little blue octopus was wroth. No wonder he swore revenge. This crooked thief was interfering with his food supply!

Lorrie wrote a followup the next day:

I confess Husband and I spent about 15 minutes last night savoring details about Fortunato N. Perri's FBI bust. Apparently, even he had a twinge of conscience at the sheer quantity of SHRIMP and CRAB CAKES he got from this one strip club owner in return for fixing tickets. (Husband noted that he managed to get over his qualms.)

Husband said Perri hadn't been too mean to him, but Husband still feels bad about the way Perri screamed at his hapless courtroom assistant, who was innocently doing her job stapling papers until Perri stopped proceedings to holler that she was making so much noise, she may as well be using a hammer.

Fenchurch and his ladylove Junko, who specialize in avant garde performance art, greeted Husband last night with their newest creation, called "Schadenfreude." It mostly involved wild tentacle waving and uninhibited cackling. Then they declared it to be the best day of their entire lives and stayed up half the night partying.

Epilogues

• Later that year, the notoriously corrupt Traffic Court was abolished, its functions transferred to regular Philadelphia Municipal Court.

• In late 2014, four of Perri's Traffic Court colleagues were convicted of federal crimes. They received prison sentences of 18 to 20 months.

• Fortunato Perri himself, by then 78 years old and in poor health, pled guilty, and was sentenced to two years of probation.

• The folks who supplied the traffic tickets and the seafood bribes were also charged. They tried to argue that they hadn't defrauded the City of Philadelphia because the people they paid Perri to let off the hook hadn't been found guilty, and would only have owed fines if they had been found guilty.

  The judges in their appeal were not impressed with this argument. See United States v. Hird et al..

• One of those traffic court judges was Willie Singletary, who I've been planning to write about since 2019. But he is a hard worker who deserves better than to be stuck in an epilogue, so I'll try to get to him later this month.

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