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You read that correctly, Kevin McGill was recently sentenced to 30 days in jail for picking up trash too early. Now you might think that Kevin is one of the people we’ve all seen picking through trash for recyclables, or metals, for money. There’d be nothing wrong with that, if it was what he was doing. IMO, that’s more honorable than collecting welfare or (obviously) stealing from people. Yet, Kevin is actually employed by the Sanitation Department in Sandy Springs, GA.

So it seems that when Kevin’s boss, who’s basically the city of Sandy Springs (the same entity that’s going to cage him), set his schedule they were asking him to break the law. The city has an ordinance stating that trash must be picked up between 7 am and 7 pm. According to WSB-TV Atlanta:

McGill was cited for picking up trash just after 5 a.m. one morning. When he went to court, chief prosecutor Bill Riley asked the judge to sentence him to 30 days in jail. “I was stunned. I didn’t know what to think. I was shocked,” McGill said. Riley doesn’t apologize for locking up sanitation workers. “Fines don’t seem to work,” Riley said. “The only thing that seems to stop the activity is actually going to jail.” Riley says 911 lights up when trash haulers come before 7 a.m. McGill, who didn’t have an attorney with him when he was sentenced, is serving his time on the weekend. His new attorney wonders why he’s being punished. “Give him a warning,” attorney Kimberly Bandoh said. “I mean he’s the employee. He’s not the employer. Sentencing him to jail is doing what?” But Riley says he is responsible for his own truck. “The company doesn’t start that truck up. The company doesn’t drive that truck down the street,” Riley said. McGill says he had only been hauling in Sandy Springs three months. He says it was hard being in jail with real criminals. “I just want this to be over with,” he said. “I’m away from my family, my wife, and she’s got to take care of the two little boys and I have four dogs.” McGill will serve the next 14 weekends in jail. His new attorney has filed a motion to withdraw his plea.

I really feel for Kevin here but I can’t help but think, “Why the hell is this guy taking it on the chin?” He got a summons for court, walked in, was told it would be mandatory jail time and instead of flipping out he merely agrees to sit in jail for 30 weekends! Outrageous! Then to hear Bill Riley’s (attorney for the city) perfect double speak – as if right out of George Orwell’s 1984 – in terms of Kevin’s responsibility for his actions, and all I can say is, “Welcome to Slave World” folks. Bill believes that jail is the only way to make the trash collectors stop picking up trash early. Yet, he must not realize that there are millions of other laws too, yet, people still break them? Even when they do go to jail. Now some will say that Bill is merely doing what Kevin was, his job. Yet, Kevin’s job is actually a service people want. While Bill is just another cog in the system of perpetual injustice.