Complaint Review: El cerrito police dept.

summary, I was fined $447.00 by an overzealous Officer Perales for pulling over to text my boss that I was running late. I had pulled over on Fairmount Ave., parked my car, turned the engine off and remained in my car for less than 5 minutes to text, when Officer Perales pulled up behind me but remained in his vehicle. I didn't know why he was behind me so proceeded to text my boss. Then he got out of his vehicle and walked up to my car and issued me a ticket for $61.00 for stopping next to a red zone--. I argued with him about the legitimacy of the ticket and asked him why he couldn't have just honked his horn or flashed his lights to indicate where I had pulled up and he responded with "so do you want me to give you an even larger ticket? you know I can do that if I want". I told him to please not do that and he said, "no, that's exactly what I'm going to do" and proceeded to walk back to his car and wrote me an additional ticket for $386. I filed a complaint with Police Chief Keith and Mayor Lyman who asked him to modify the ticket and to reissue the ticket with just one not both penalties. When I received the modified ticket Officer Perales had taken it upon himself to remove the initial $61 ticket, not the larger ticket issued in retaliation. After much research and legal counsel I was told that my only real recourse was social media--so here I am. El Cerrito is famous for this kind of police conduct and the conclusion I've reached is that its residents like too much the money their revenue boosting behavior brings to their lovely city (new city hall, lovely median strips) so just look the other way.